


In Fact, Everything's Got That Big Reverb Sound

by dystopiary



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Ableist Language, Babysitting, Dark Comedy, Dentistry, Family Feels, First Kiss, Gen, Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, In Conclusion 14 Year Old Boys Are Awful, Incessant Pop Cultural References, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mild Blood, Mixes 2017 & Book Canon, Mixtapes as Plot Point, Opioid Usage, Sexual Humor, Slice of Life, Stream of Consciousness, fatphobic language, mild body horror, misogynist language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 06:35:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 46,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20385259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dystopiary/pseuds/dystopiary
Summary: Richie Tozier deals with dry socket, the prodigal sister, shifting dynamics in his friendships, babysitting, and the maddening unavailability of Eddie Kaspbrak.





	1. Chapter 1

**Friday**

Richie Tozier is 14 years old and he is wise beyond his years. Like, Tootsie Pop owl wise. “Wise as fuck,” he would intone sagely, if he were currently capable of anything resembling speech. Instead, he’s hooked up to an IV in his dad’s office and getting a diet version of anesthesia that’s supposed to put him into a state they’re ominously referring to as ‘twilighting’. He doesn’t think the drugs have actually started flowing yet, but he’s still captive in the chair with cheeks full of cotton, and stuck with the motormouthed goblin in his head instead of the one that possesses his larynx.

He’s having his slightly impacted wisdom teeth removed. Apparently they’ve come in much faster than they do for most, and they’ve been causing him terrible aching pain over the last 6 months. His dad had told him, “Mine didn’t come in until I was 20. I haven’t had a single kid under 17 show up with your level of growth.” He’d said it like Richie had done this on purpose, as part of his neverending bid to be a constant nuisance. As far as Richie’s concerned his dad should be _thanking_ him, seeing as he’s currently acting guinea pig for his dad’s green new prospective office partner. Richie’s been under this guy’s near constant care for the past 6 months as they’ve made up new reasons for him to be seen. Richie’s usually glad to do it, as his dad’s been slipping him a ten spot for each visit, but today’s hell is worth way more than a Hamilton and Richie intends to argue that point as soon as he can talk again. The sooner new guy is up to snuff the sooner his dad gets to start collecting office rent and taking fewer clients. Clear up some free time, probably to spend even less time at home with the wife and kids.

Hopefully this procedure is the coup de grace and Richie can move on to a summer free of aching gums and solitude. He hasn’t been completely recluse, but he definitely hasn’t seen as much of his friends as he’s hoped to. He wonders if maybe they’ll be more eager to hang out if they know he’s flush with cash and willing to front at the theater or arcade? If not, there’s always his sister. She’s just graduated from college and is 100 percent without prospects, crashing with the folks until she finds her way. Maybe Richie’s not pathetic enough for either option – bribing his friends to socialize (been there), reluctantly turning to his sister for attention (done that). Maybe he’ll do the smart and cool and self-sufficient thing and buy the CD player he’s been coveting for years, so he doesn’t have to use his dad’s (admittedly awesome) stereo set up in the garage. With his own rig he could lock himself away with music and practice his deejaying skills, much like he’s tried to work on the Voices. For a minute there he was getting good (better, anyway) but the unpredictable shifting timbres of puberty derail him every time and discourage the practice.

Oh, and there it goes, the drugs are definitely kicking in now. Richie prepares his mind for a total shut down, or at least a pleasant swiminess, but neither really comes. If anything he’s feeling hyper aware. Not of what’s happening to his mouth, which he’s been thankfully numbed to, but of every intrusive thought he’s managed to ignore over the last year.

He feels strangely like he’s back at Stan’s bar mitzvah. Sitting alone, forced quiet, zoning out on unfamiliar words (and feelings and concepts). He felt then the same duality of awake and not awake. Duality - like Stan being a man now, but still so obviously a boy. Duality - like the nightmares of Neibolt house being both true and impossible. Duality - like how he sometimes remembers it all, but sometimes doesn’t remember a single tangible thing, and all at the same time.

So presently, in the dentist’s chair, it’s who knows how long of sounds and pressures and tugging and maybe…are they hallucinations? That’s probably the best word. Visualizations of people who aren’t there, can’t be, but then maybe it’s also a little real? His bond with the Loser’s Club may transcend the laws of reality enough to summon them here in Richie’s time of need. So maybe that _is_ Stan there standing vigil. Dual Stan, post mitzvah Stan, Stan the Man. Reading from the Torah or ‘Chronicling Corvids’ , his kippah like an inverted bird’s nest on sadly subdued curls. Or maybe instead it’s sweet conscientious Ben, reading to him, hopefully anything other than Derry town history. Or maybe it’s Bill there, sketching the scene - Richie imagines it animated like a fucked up version of the video for ‘Take On Me’, but with 100 % less romance and 100 % more oral surgery. Maybe Mike is there, strong and kind and all quiet dignity – such a grounding force to his friends, so grounded in himself. Maybe _too_ grounded, maybe his Derry-grounded roots are snaking vines there to drag them all down. Roots like the stubborn one in the upper left quadrant of his gums - the dentist tugging endlessly on one stubborn spot, dragging his horrific reality into his horrific subconscious and intertwining them in still more horrific ways. Maybe it’s tenacious Bev now; as the Derry deserter she’s the perfect hero to destroy the town’s attacking roots. His mind cycles through weapons of choice like a scrolling selection in a video game, floating and pixelated, highlight shifting from one to the other. Baseball bat, cattle gun, slingshot. She equips, she aims, she fires.

There’s a final tug on that nesting tooth and the pressure is alleviated for some few glorious seconds while all the roots start to clear away in his brain. Bev must’ve taken them out for him. Or probably it’s just that things are just starting to wrap up, and the real world has reasserted its presence. Richie accepts that it’s probably the latter.

The office is growing brighter and realer by the second. Oddly enough, he feels cheated out of his hallucination’s denouement. After all - where was Eddie? Where was his expressive face, showing horror at Richie’s gaping gleeking bleeding maw and the sheer bacterium of it all? Had he truly seen Eddie so infrequently over the past year that he can’t even conjure a mental image of the boy?

Maybe so. See, Eddie had missed ages of school towards the beginning of the year due to some cataclysmic illness that none of them know the full details of. Once Eddie had started attending class on a regular basis he was so far behind that he was in mostly remedial classes. He and Richie didn’t even share a lunch period, let alone any classes. Maybe that will change next year, Richie certainly hopes. Eddie is (mostly) bright, and just like Stan had done years ago in jumping from 5th grade to 6th, he _should_ be back where he belongs for the coming year.

The last time Richie actually socialized with Eddie was right before the end of the school year. Ben had hosted a celebratory it’s-almost-summer slumber party and Eddie had made a 45 minute appearance before rushing home. He’d spent most of that time explaining why he couldn’t stay longer. It went something like this: “Okay, listen. I told my mom I was working on thank you gifts for the teachers. She knows I don’t have homework anymore so I couldn’t lie and say I was studying. She calls the school for all my assignments so I can never use that as an excuse to socialize with my friends or hang at the library or take in an inning at the Truck Depot or just breathe some goddamned fresh air for 15 minutes. Anyways... so, of course, she’s going to call and ask my teachers about said thank you gifts. To cover for this lie I’ve already been mass producing paper cranes and other origami bullshit in my room alone at night. Throw that together with some Hershey’s Kisses and I guess I’ve got a decent half-assed end of year token of my appreciation for all their boringness and emotional abuse.” He’d paused to catch his breath and Richie had made to respond, but Eddie noticed his mouth moving and plowed back in with zero room for interruption, “No, Richie, you can’t have any of the Hershey’s Kisses. They’re at home with the dumb cranes. I’m sorry I didn’t bring anything to share, everybody. I was so shocked she let me come over I didn’t even think about it. I haven’t been able to think properly all year. I think being told you’re a fucking dummy and have to take all your classes with the next generation of Belches is enough to ruin anybody’s brain. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy or something. If I wasn’t stupid before then I sure as fuck am now. It’s like how when innocent men go to prison and they come out hardened criminals. That’s pretty much me, now. Except instead of committing armed robbery I’m calling novels ‘chapter books’. I’ve fully regressed, I swear.”

Richie had wanted to interrupt - there were so many things there he could riff on - but he had to respect the effort it took to get that all out. Plus, he was distracted by trying to figure out what looked different about Eddie. Was his hair longer? Had he grown an inch and some centimeters? Was he paler? Probably yes to all of those, but it was something more. Something Richie couldn’t put his finger on. He got so lost in trying to figure this out that he didn’t notice the conversation going on around him. Eddie was letting _other people _talk now. Ben, Stan, Mike, Bill – listed in order of how many words they spoke, all while Richie said nothing.

Eventually Richie got startled out of his reverie by Eddie repeating his name, and punctuating the last repeated “Richie!” with a slug on his shoulder. “Ouch, fuck. What is it?” Richie finally said, his eyes meeting Eddie’s for a second and then shifting back to the screen of the TV.

“Were you listening to a single word I said,” Eddie demanded.

“Sorry, I was watching the movie.”

“It’s on pause, dipshit.”

So it was. On the screen Littlefoot was kicking a leaf into the air, and it hovered over him midair like an umbrella without a handle. It made Richie think of parachute day in gym class. He’d turned to meet Eddie’s eyes and thought they looked remarkably similar to how they’d always looked on parachute day - knowing the other kids were having fun while he was excluded from _all_ gym activities, whether they be strenuous or not. It was the look of resigned disappointment.

“Sorry, Eds, I spaced out.” He kind of had. This was around the time his teeth had started to ache in earnest, and he’d popped a T3 from his parent’s medicine cabinet before coming over to Ben’s. Codeine is a menace that Richie vowed to avoid in the future, but at that point it was too late and the damage was done. 

“Don’t call me – oh, you know what, nevermind. What I said is that I’m leaving now.”

“Noooo,” Richie had whined, grabbing at the bottom of Eddie’s shorts to hold back his retreating form. “You just got here.”

Eddie slapped Richie’s hand away. “Yeah, and now I’m leaving, as I explained I would need to do a half hour ago.”

Richie had wanted to joke about how he couldn’t be expected to retain information that long. He wanted to make fun of Eddie’s teal and lilac windbreaker jacket, which he hadn’t removed the entire time he was there. He wanted the old back and forth, where they would bust each other’s balls as breezily as other people discussed the weather.

Instead of Getting Off A Good One, he kind of just mewled, “I miss you.” Embarrassing. 

Eddie turned around and locked his gaze. ‘Oh no’, Richie thought. Raw vulnerability might have worked _too _well. Maybe Eddie was going to stay, Mrs. K be damned.

There was a long awkward pause, and Richie still wasn’t completely with it so he almost fell into a trance again because Eddie was so _still_ and was staring at him and all Richie could think was ‘he’s gone tharn’. Then he wasted several long seconds trying to remember what that meant, tracing it back to ‘Watership Down’, groaning over mentally comparing Eddie to an innocent woodland creature. It didn’t quite fit, though. Tharn isn’t for awkward eye contact between friends. Tharn is for staring immobilized into the oncoming headlights of a speeding car, certain death imminent. There’s something _there_, though. Headlights. Death. And oh, isn’t that (the deadlights) so close to something his mind can’t touch, and doesn’t that sober him up immediately, spurring his mouth back into action. “I miss you almost as much as I miss your mom,” Richie had said, dumbly.

Eddie narrowed his eyes, and dumb Richie continued. “That’s why I’m gonna stop by your room on the way out tonight, collect some paper swans and Kisses. That can be my thank you gift for teaching you about the birds and the bees, Eddie my boy.” There. Embarrassment diverted.

Eddie scoffed and sputtered, like he was about to launch into a tirade but also doesn’t want to dignify it.

Apparently there were other people there too, though? It blew both Richie’s and Eddie’s minds when Stan spoke up instead, “See, Richie. This is what he’s talking about with those listening skills. He specifically said you _couldn’t_ have any of the candy.” Stan’s words may be in admonishment of Richie, but Richie knows they’re really just a weak effort to help him out by diffusing the tension. Stan the Man, reporting for best friend duty.

“Who said anything about candy?” Richie had said, with an insufferable wink in Eddie’s direction. He’d dug himself in even deeper, so Bill decided to chime in, “Also, Eddie said cranes, not s-swans. They’re not even in the same _family_, Richie, let alone _genus_. It’s like you never read the ‘Avian Encyclopedia’ I g-gave you after receiving 3 copies for my bar mitzvah,” he finished with minimal stuttering, in a near perfect impersonation of Stan. 

“Thanks, Stans,” Richie began, while Eddie was turning the doorknob to leave. But Mike was speaking over him, saying a steady and pleasant and apologetic goodbye to Eddie. Ben was trying to do the same when Richie steamrolled him with a loud, “hate to see you go, but I love to watch you leave.”

Eddie had slammed the door and Richie had ended up with two couch cushions thrown at his head. Totally deserved, but in combination with the painkiller and the clawing guilt and confusion, it created a sudden onset nausea that had him running to the downstairs half-bath and puking his guts out. Richie doesn’t get nauseated easy, but when he does feel that churning sensation there’s really no stopping it.

Of course, _now_ he’s nauseated while coming to in this damn dentist’s chair. Swallowed spit and blood, numbness, the rub of cotton on the tip of his tongue, visions, guilt. There are tears streaming down his face and his dad is looking at him with obvious shame. New guy has the decency to at least look mildly concerned. Of course, Richie is not wearing his glasses, so these expressions are blurry at best and he accepts that he may be projecting.

He’s gagging a little bit and new guy advises him “breathe through it” like it’s so easy with half his airways blocked up with gauze and the numbness crawling all the way back to his tonsils. Yeah, sure, he’s got two perfectly healthy nostrils - he’s no mouth breather. But his sinuses feel clogged from the laid back position and…yeah, okay, he has mouth breathing tendencies. New guy somehow manages to talk his stomach down, though. Convincing arguments about the excruciating pains of dry socket (the name alone gives Richie the old fashioned heebie jeebies) and how tossing his cookies is a sure road to getting it.

He loses time a little bit and finds himself in the backseat of his dad’s car, buckled tight but still loose limbed and starfished.

“Alright, kiddo, we’re here. Be sure to follow all of Dr. Kramer’s guidelines. Especially the one on smoking, which I know you do sometimes so don’t try and grunt any protests. If you need more gauze there’s some in mine and Mom’s en suite. You know, the one you swiped the Tylenol 3s from.”

Richie says, “Mhew mided yennow?” and his dad responds, “Because I count them. We can’t afford to have your mother start mixing again.”

Richie is glad that no response is expected of him, and that he couldn’t properly make one if he tried. Peggy returning from college has done a real number on the way they communicate as a family. There was a time that Wentworth Tozier would have never dared to casually mention his wife’s substance abuse in front of his kids, but his daughter coming back from college with a head full of touchy-feely socio-political mumbo-jumbo has upset the status quo, and it’s easier for him to follow the tide than fight it. They’re a family that communicates now, whether he likes it or not.

They both sit there in uncomfortable silence for 30 seconds before Richie figures out the door handle and climbs out to stumble into the house. Running on instinctual auto pilot he turns the TV on and plops onto the couch in preparation to watch, but passes out within 2 minutes. He thinks a drifting idle thought that it’s a shame he’s missing out on ‘Family Feud’, especially with the last question being, ‘What would a child say is their biggest fear?’ This is a question Richie would ring in on first, nail the top answer, and say ‘Yowza! Yes siree we’ll be playing that for sure,’ before leading his family back to their extended podium. Not the Tozier family, of course, but the Losers. In truth they’d have to sit out a couple to fit the format, but in Richie’s dream that doesn’t matter. Especially considering the host keeps shuffling out after every exchange, turning from the predictable Richard Dawson or Roy Combs into a more surreal Pee-wee Herman or Big Bird. The opposing family keeps changing as well. The Keenes, the Bowies, the Universal Monsters – that’s when he starts to get nervous about where this dream is going, and thankfully that’s when his sister thwaps him awake with a charming, “Get up, asshole. We have to go babysit for the Nells.”

He hasn’t slept long, but the light quality impresses through the blinds that time has progressed from blaring afternoon to soft early evening. The numbness is only half gone, so there is some small pain – especially where the gauze has compacted into hard little pressure points in his mouth. All Richie really wants is a pound of mashed potatoes, some good old fashioned Tylenol, and to lie out on his bed until he can slip back under and destroy at Fast Money.

Peggy Tozier thrusts a glass and a canister of Morton salt into Richie’s hands. He eyes them warily. There’s something eerie about the photo on the salt canister, and he’s too dream dazed to figure out why or what the items are for. 

“Go rinse, dummy. We have to leave now,” she tells him.

Richie starts to talk but it’s all muffled, so he spits the gauze into the cup and explains, “I’m not supposed to rinse until tomorrow.” His voice sounds funny to his own ears, like someone else’s. Deeper. He clears his throat, swallowing some blood and saliva, and tries not to gag. “Also, why would I go to babysitting with you? Alannah is the best kid ever. You play her some Disney, she goes to bed at 8, you spend the rest of the evening rounding the bases with Trevor ‘Call-Me-Tre’ Sidell until good ol’ Ann and Declan roll back in around 10. Easy peasy. It’s a racket, honestly.” Damn, that was too much talking. He knew he couldn’t be trusted with brevity, should have just kept his mouth closed and gone ‘Bwuh’? all night. His mouth feels weird.

“First off, that was repulsive. Secondly, I would pay more than I’m making tonight to not have to be around your pink spit dribbling mouth, but Mom insisted I watch over you. You know on Fridays she’s got book club.”

Richie raises his brow to signal his disbelief in her words.

“Ok,” she says, “So. I tried to get out of the gig by telling the Nells I was watching over you tonight, but they’re desperate and offered to double my fee, so now they’re expecting me to have you in tow. Even more damning is that Alannah is expecting you as well, sooo…”

Richie groans. He feels like hell but knows he’s doomed to acquiesce. Disappointing the coolest living third grader is too much negativity for him to put into the universe right now. He knows small children naturally gravitate towards him, Alannah in particular, and the Nells are fine with that as long as he leans in on the Yankovic vibe and lays off the Dice Clay vocabulary.

“Okay, but I’m gonna need your Walkman and at least five tapes to choose from. Oh, and a tub of mashed potatoes from KFC. Family size. And a cut of your proceeds, of course,” Richie says, using the sofa’s arm to get shakily to his feet.

“What happened to your Walkman?” she asks, her acerbic tone undercut by the steadying hand she places on his shoulder.

“I lent it to a friend.” Eddie, to be exact. Maybe more _gave_ than _lent_. Eddie wasn’t allowed to own a Walkman because Sonia Kasbrak is of the staunchly held belief that they’re certain to cause premature deafness. If Eddie was ever going to hear anything decent he was going to have to do so surreptitiously, and Richie considers himself the music aficionado of the group and was more than happy to sacrifice his Christmas gift from 2 years ago to that cause.

Richie experiences another time jump into a vehicle. This time it’s not the back of his dad’s car but the passenger side of his sister’s Jeep. Instead of starfished he’s buckled securely and hanging onto the belt like it’s the grab bar of a particularly gnarly rollercoaster. The vehicle isn’t moving yet, but there’s no door on those things and you can never be too careful when you’re partially gorked out of your mind. Peg jumps in, throws a tote bag in the back, and begins the grueling trek to five doors down and across the street. Normally she walks, but her plans for the evening necessitate a vehicle and her baby brother burden wouldn’t make it 40 yards on his own two feet right now.

She walks her brother to the door, makes nicey nice with the Nells, waves them off assuredly, installs Richie on the couch with her tote full of gauze and music, and hightails it back to the Jeep for Richie’s KFC run. She’s not too concerned about either of them. Sixty seconds of Alannah’s enthusiastic attention will have Richie alert enough to supervise, and Alannah is a very conscientious child that can supervise Richie in return.

Richie doesn’t even notice that his sister is out. Within minutes he’s completely enrapt by The Little Mermaid. The movie is completely new to him, probably skipped it at the theater out of embarrassment, and it hasn’t been out on video very long. He is utterly dazzled. Transfixed. Mesmerized. Enthralled. Doesn’t notice that Alannah is painting his nails while he watches, because she’s 8 and has an endless capacity to rewatch movies ad nauseam, and is jaded to the spectacle on her parent’s big, enormous 27” television.

Peg comes back with his mashed potatoes when Prince Eric’s rescuing the dog - what a guy - and Richie doesn’t mind the pause break because the onscreen devastation is making him pretty tense. Plus, Alannah is done with his nails so he has full use of his hands back, finally able to put them to their divine purpose of mashed potato shoveling.

“You two seem to be doing well,” Peg says with a smile. Alannah is playing with a Tuppertoy’s Noah’s Ark set, rapidly snapping and unsnapping the giraffe pair together in a frenzied and probably unintentional mating display. Richie has got one hand on his spork and the other hand on the remote control, waiting for her to give a go ahead. She continues, “So you should be fine without me.”

“Bwuh?” Richie says, this time more from the solid coating of thick and pasty KFC potato product than from the novocain.

“I ran into Tre while I was out and we’re going to do some catching up. I’d drag him over here, but he’s still got to finish out his shift at the record store and that’s where I’ll be. It’s in the phone book if you need me. You both know the drill. Bed time is 8.”

“One, I can’t believe they let ‘Tre’ oversee the stock at the venerable Dingle Derry’s, our finest retail establishment. Two, I expect to be compensated. Three, bedtime is not until I find out what happens to Ariel and Prince Eric, even if it’s 8:07 when credits roll. Four, I have like seven more points but with each word I lose half my mashed potatoes and I’m gonna have to prioritize potato retention,” Richie says, his diction a mess. Really, he was sounding a lot like he had during his embarrassing attempts at throwing his voice for ventriloquism.

Alannah giggles the brightest giggle, because Richie on a normal day is amusing enough, but this extra-uncouth food-spewing fuzzy-brained version is comedy gold for her. Peggy wants to respond to him with a long suffering sigh, but instead shoots off a facetious “oh you!” so her reaction aligns more with Alannah’s. Peg getting away with ditching her duties is entirely contingent upon Alannah’s good will, and she doesn’t want to give the kid any reason to rat her out.

“You’ll be fine, Rich. If you can power through a rant like that then you’re definitely recovered enough to man this alone. I should be back before Ann and Declan. Relax, you’ll get paid. Double if I can convince you not to add Jamaican crab to your repertoire of shitty and offensive accents.”

Alannah pipes in excitedly, “Swear jar! S-word is a quarter to the swear jar!”

Richie’s eyes bug out comically. Actually, magnified as they are behind his glasses it’s less comical and more grotesque. “Swear jar? Peg, how do you expect me to last more than 30 minutes without bankrupting myself and draining my dental torture guinea pig savings?”

Peggy roots around in her purse and locates a quarter to place in the swear jar on the family’s mantle. Richie notices it’s half full with silver coins and wadded up singles. He may have zero respect for the concept of a swear jar, but he can at least respect the not insignificant currency it has accrued. Sure and begorrah, the Nells are some swearing sons of bitches. Richie may even respect that enough to make a concerted effort not to swear around their 8 year old daughter.

Richie is tired of his sister’s drawn out exit, now. He knows she’s already made up her mind, knows there’s something in it for him, and knows it’ll be best to go with the tide on this one. Plus, speaking of the tide, Prince Eric is submerged in the ocean and Richie is anxious to see just what the fuck happens next. So he unpauses and shoos her off with a dismissive wrist flick.

If it weren’t for the movie magic he might have let anxiety creep in and throw doubts on his ability to do the job, now that he’s settling in and his mouth once again tastes more like pennies than potatoes. He reaches into his tote bag for some fresh gauze, jams it in his mouth while each little slug is cutting a rug, and watches the rest of the movie in childlike awe. He’s feeling better, nearly with it, but still too gorked out to try and insert any irony into his enjoyment. Alannah merely hums along to the melodies, looks up from her toys at all the best parts, and stays continually uncomplicated.

It’s around 7:45 when the movie ends and Alannah rushes out of his sight to put on pajamas and brush her teeth. Richie is beginning to think his job is done before it’s really started. Without the stimulation of the movie, and the immediacy of having her there in the room, Richie falls back into a forgetful daze. Just as his chin is lurching forward to bang against a bony clavicle she comes back and snaps him out of it by requesting a glass of water.

“I’m too short for the cabinets, but you’re big and can reach them,” she informs him, with the disproportionate dread seriousness that possesses children at the strangest of times.

So, he makes his somnambulist shuffle to the kitchen and finds the glasses behind cabinet door number three, bypassing the prominent hordes of crystal to root around for something bright and unbreakable - kid friendly. He finds perfection in some hideous melamine cups with a watermelon print, something that probably goes with a festive summer punch set. Fills it at the tap and walks it into Alannah’s room with an almost supplicant shuffle. By the time it’s secured steadily onto her bedside table he notices that she’s already asleep and mentally blesses his luck. Mentally attributes it to the luck of the Irish imbuing the entire household with an abundance of prosperity, enough of it to gift even a guest with its influence.

Richie tiptoes back to the living room and stretches out for his second couch nap of the day. The numbness is wearing off and the pain is rearing its ugly head, but Richie is convinced that only good things can happen to him here so he blocks it out and falls into a pleasant and dreamless sleep.

He’s so tired he barely notices the sister-gets-back-by-the-skin-of-her-teeth-Ferris-Bueller-style-shennanigans going on around him, Peggy trying to hide labored breathing while getting paid, and he becomes only halfway cognizant on the laughably short car ride home, where his sister hands him a chocolate malt in a stark white styrofoam cup. 

He’s kind of forgotten he was supposed to get paid for this, so the shake is just an unexpected bonus, and not just a pathetic consolation prize. He says as such, “Oooh, bonus,” as he starts sipping it. It’s kind of awkward with the gauze still in his mouth, but as his dad always says – where there’s a will, there’s a way.

“Yeah, I thought it might feel nice on your, uh, tonsils or whatever,” she says in a distant and bemused tone as she parks her Jeep.

“Uh, wisdom teeth. Like Dad would spring for major surgery unless I was literally dying. Also, are you drunk?” he punctuated this question with a particularly long gulp of malt.

“Kind of, yeah,” she says, with a shrug and a giggle, as they enter their house. She’s not overly worried about getting caught out for drinking, knowing her mom is probably already passed out from bottles of Chardonnay with the ladies at the book club. It’s a Friday so she suspects Dad has started a long weekend of – dad stuff. Conventioneering, or losing money at a local poker game, or maybe even practicing with the super embarrassing Dad Band he had going with some other local ‘medical professionals’. So far they mostly just cover shitty bands like Foreigner and Toto, but Bob the OB/GYN had been trying to sell them on some originals for months. Regardless, Peg isn’t worried about censure and never really has been. The booze and the lack of worry would account for why she doesn’t realize until later, while drifting off to sleep, why she shouldn’t have given her baby brother a milkshake after having four teeth extracted. A dentist’s daughter really should know better. The best she can hope for is that he’d been sneaking cigs sometime that day too, so she could deflect the blame onto that as a flashier Big Bad. Disregarding the brief worry, she falls asleep contented.

After a crazy fucking day, his mouth repacked with fresh gauze but still tasting malty, Richie also falls asleep contented. He’d made at least 30 dollars that day (only ‘at least’ because he still wants to renegotiate that wisdom teeth kickback) and he’d seen ‘The Little Mermaid’, possibly the finest film of all time. Maybe tied with ‘Steel Magnolias’, which he’d got suckered into watching with Ben two weeks previous. Sure, he’d go on saying ‘Evil Dead 2’ was his favorite movie, but Richie is a secret sucker for shit that makes him feel stuff. So, yeah, Richie feels pretty damn good when he falls asleep.

So, of course, he wakes up the next morning (at 11:36 to be exact) in absolute agony.

**SATURDAY**

Richie is clenching the T3s from his parent’s medicine cabinet and regarding it with wariness. He’s already taken one, counted out the rest (17), and is currently trying to figure out a plan. He knows that addiction runs in his family, but it’s an abstract knowledge that he’s too young to have internalized. More to the point, he knows this shit makes him nauseated, but he’s never been in pain like this in his life (even when his 11 year old self broke his tibia trying to do sick flips on a Pogo Bal) and has no intentions of toughing it out. After one of the previous dental sessions Richie had been hurt badly by a slipped dental tool that tore through a chunk of incisor gum. When he got home his dad had handed him the pills within a minute of arriving. Richie had said, “I’m surprised you don’t want me to just tough it out. Isn’t that something you say a lot? Tough it out, it builds character.”

Wentworth replied, “Son, ’tough it out’ is for stubbed toes and skinned knees, not bleeding gums. Besides, you have about as much ‘character’ as any of us can stomach, Richie. I wouldn’t recommend building character so much as chiseling away the excess.”

The point of this rumination being that Richie knows he’s essentially allowed to take these, pilfered though they were, but he’s afraid to do so. He bargains that he’ll take it as directed, for three days, and if he’s still in pain he’ll get his sister to get her boyfriend to scare him up some pot. He’s only had it a couple times but it fucks his head up way less than codeine.

All his agonizing is seemingly for nothing when his dad walks in, snatches the pills out of his hand, and replaces them with a fuller bottle that has his name, Dr. New Guy’s name, and the words Hydrocodone/Acetaminophen on it. 

“Your sister called Dr. Kramer this morning because she said you’ve spent the last four hours wailing like a dying cat. Probably dry socket, of course. I know you were given all the lectures and literature on what to avoid and yet here we are. If that smoking habit of yours is so bad that you can’t give them up for a few days then we’re going to have to stop looking the other way.” He is trying his stern voice, one he rarely has occasion to use. He used it more often than blatant anger (or blatant kindness, for that matter) but it still belies a level of caring that is rarely present in their exchanges.

Richie furrows his brow in confusion and purses his lips in resentment. “I didn’t smoke.”

“Throw up? Use a straw? Rinse too vigorously too soon?” his dad lists off the common causes, with an underlying tone that shouts, ‘suuuuure you didn’t smoke, _sure_.’

Richie blinks his slow and owlish blinks, his gut roiling with codeine and swallowed blood and last night’s malt and the (exposed-)bone deep embarrassment of realizing that a fucking milkshake has ruined his life for the next who knows how many days (or weeks?!). He opens his mouth to talk, that awful dry mouthed smacking noise erupting unintentionally, and tells his dad the terrible truth. “I had a chocolate malt. It was straw city in my mouth last night. Sucked it up like a -“

Wentworth cuts him off, “do not need to know where that sentence ends. You know, son, you don’t have to lie. Don’t get me wrong - I don’t want you smoking. But bringing this on yourself over something as banal as a milkshake isn’t going to score you any sympathy points.”

“You’re basically saying you would have preferred I get it from smoking,” Richie concludes.

“It doesn’t have to be a value judgment, Rich. I’m just trying and failing, as usual, to understand your decision making process. Anyway, tee time is in 30 and I’ve got to motor. The island in the kitchen is completely littered with pamphlets on post extraction care. Day two is when the real pain starts so follow the directions on your script. Do us all a favor, yourself most importantly, and lock yourself up in your room until you feel human,” Wentworth says on his way out the door.

Richie admires his ability to switch gears so quickly from ‘you’re a massive disappointment’ to ‘cya bye’ and one day aspires to segue so seamlessly in response. When Richie misses a chance at a comeback with his father he thinks he’s utilizing his rarely dusted off brain > mouth filter, ostensibly as an allowance protection method, but really it’s just that he finds his dad as baffling as both his parents seem to find him. He understands his mother a little better, and he has ever since 10 year old him heard them arguing about his ‘deportment’ reports from school. Wentworth had been his standard blasé but Maggie had been anxious, as anxious as Richie had heard her sound since Peggy had gone off to college the fall previous. “Think of how this makes us look. Honestly, Went, if you’re not going to give a damn I don’t know why I should. This is all you. You were the one who wanted a son, after all.” So, there it is. She pretends to care, selectively, but Richie knows his sister is her only true care in the world. His father, though – he pretends to care, he pretends not to care, he seems to cycle between the two contradictory states without ever striking a disingenuous note. Richie doesn’t even know if that means there’s a lot to unravel there or if it’s a what-you-see-is-what-you get situation. Regardless, if he’s ever going to figure it out, it’s not going to be _now_. 

It’s a testament to how awful Richie feels that he effectively follows his dad’s directive and goes up to his room to languish. His every movement is sluggish and his mind is twice as bad as his body. He goes to put on some pajamas, his favorite old soft flannel pants and generic tank, and suffers the grim realization that he’s completely grown out of them. He could swear they fit fine just last week, but that’s the grotesquerie of a rapidly changing body for you.

He’s too tired to try again on the pajama front and plops down into bed in boxers and the too-small tank shirt. He’s alone, and his family are generally good about the ‘knock before entering’ thing – if only to protect their own sanity – so he decides to strip off even the tank as it digs into his armpit flesh.

He wants to fall right into sleep but instead lays in bed, tired but alert in his overly bright room. He mentally pledges to invest in some black out curtains. It is summer, after all, might as well take advantage of sleeping well into the daylight. He mentally catalogues all his friends phone numbers, reassuring himself that he’s still got them all memorized (in case of emergency.) (Emergency, like he’s out on the town and divine inspiration from the pranking gods shines its light on an available public phone.) After that he mentally writes a two act play about the symbiosis between ‘Bicycle Race’ and ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ but ditches the clunky play format and reworks it as an ice skating routine. Next, he tries to imagine what strange shapes he could see in the sky above if only there were no ceiling and roof in the way. He becomes convinced there simply must be a rabbit up there, or else why could he envision it so clearly? 

He lays there for ten minutes or two hours or something in between and instead of falling asleep he falls into another drug induced hallucination fest. The rabbit is actually in the patterned whorls of his ceiling now, but instead of stationary (tharn) it is moving. Twitching, hopping, fleeing from the predator on its tail. Richie doesn’t see the predator but he knows what it is because he can hear the music. A French horn. It’s the wolf, of course. Never mind that Richie is mixing up ‘Watership Down’ and ‘Peter & The Wolf’ in this bastard bas relief, it’s playing out expertly like that’s how it was always meant to be. It’s a terrifying chase through the warren, ten minutes or two hours or something in between, but Richie finally gets the denouement he was missing yesterday. The rabbit is cornered between the farmer’s vicious snare and the jaws of the wolf. 

He clamps his eyes shut tight, tries to shut his mind’s eye as well, and tries not to look. The wolf won’t be able to reach it if it backs itself into the snare. The snare won’t take its freedom if it bolts forward to the wolf. Its only choice is which death to accept. Richie doesn’t see, but he knows. The taste of blood in his own mouth and he knows the rabbit chose the wolf (who is now him) because it was the only choice with a chance, little chance though it was. He (the wolf) makes the death quick.

Richie doesn’t have to hallucinate to know he’s the wolf. He’s known it for a year now, every night lying in bed and imagining (no, _knowing_) he can hear the ungodly stretch as his body grows. He’s been aware of the phrase ‘growing pains’ for years, but until recently he’d thought it was a figurative expression. Well, at first he just thought it was a shitty TV show. Either way, nothing to be taken literally. But it is, it’s literal as fuck, and it _hurts_. Sometimes he aches so bad he imagines his body is undergoing the transformation scene in ‘An American Werewolf in London’. Bone cracking, sinew stretching, skin tearing pain. A few weeks previous he had felt the comparison so acutely that he decided to actually howl it out, see if that helped. It kind of had, but probably only because he’d had a new pain to focus on after his sister came in to shut him up by throwing a pillar candle at his head. She’d felt pretty bad for making such a direct hit and made up for it by furnishing him with painkillers and water. She lost the goodwill later when he found out the painkillers were Midol, which of course made him feel totally emasculated. Doubly so after he pinched the bottle from her because it had worked surprisingly well.

Richie wishes he’d taken the Midol instead of the hydrocodone. Midol never made him hallucinate. Barely ever. Not really hallucinations, per se, just the psychosomatic perception that it was accentuating his ‘feminine traits’ and that prolonged exposure would increase his fashion sense (good!), his intuition (helpful!), his emotional maturity (boring), his aptitude for housework (boo), and possibly even affect his sexuality (that’s bad, right?) (Maybe best to come back to that later.)

The whole thing gets him so nauseated that he throws up into his bedside waste basket, dislodges whatever scant blood clots he may have left, and finally passes out into a fitful but deep sleep.

**SUNDAY**

Over the next few days Richie finds out that dry socket sucks real bad. More painful than his 6th grade Pogo Bal broken leg (sick flip completed, landing precarious), more painful than his 7th grade broken nose (Bowers, of course), even more painful than his 8th grade tetanus shot and the injury that required it (long story, not important).

Saturday is pretty uneventful. At some point the Dentist makes a house call for some inspection and repacking. Richie sleeps before and after this and barely remembers a thing. Dr. Kramer must have spoken to Peggy some time before leaving because she walks him through a gentle brushing and rinsing routine. It’s always awkward to be mothered by a sibling but it feels especially weird for Richie because he’s taller than her now and he doesn’t even realize it until he sees them both reflected in the bathroom mirror. He’s pretty sure his mom has still got an inch or two on him but Peggy stopped growing at a respectable but relatively petite 5’5. Usually she would be bitching about this kind of thing but Richie thinks she’s still in the same resigned and serene headspace one must enter to nurse their mother through a hangover. Richie suspects he’s patient number two this morning.

He knows other stuff happens. Eating (careful), drinking (careful), medicating (as prescribed, but maybe not careful per se). None of it makes much of an impression, which is partly why Sunday is such a shock to him.

If Saturday was aimless misery then Sunday is productive misery. Between the excess sleep and the worsening pain he’s not really able to pass it in any sort of daze. It’s not for a lack of trying. He tries to zone out on some scrambled cable signals, because he’d rather have an unsettling daydream than be this damn alert for another excruciating second. It might have even worked if he hadn’t been interrupted by his mom emerging from her room.

She surprises him by making genuine attempts at caretaking. She tells him, “I haven’t heard you this quiet since…ever, maybe.” Sitting next to him while he half watches an infomercial, detangling his hair with her fingers. Richie feels genuinely comforted in a way he hasn’t in…ever, maybe. It’s nice. But the more comfortable he gets with her the more she withdraws, as always.

He wishes he could stay quiet, but one does not simply bear the horrific visage of Tony Robbins without making some digs here and there. Like, “Yeesh, this guy is something. He looks like if Skeletor tried to disguise himself in human flesh. But, like, he realized he fucked up the first time and instead of starting over he just put another mask on top of the other failed mask.” He punctuates this observation with “blah blah blah PERSONAL POWER – NYAH!” in a passable Skeletor impression that his mother can’t appreciate at all.

“Honestly, Richard, you could probably learn a lot from this gentleman,” she says with a sigh. “And I think he’s rather handsome.”

Richie feigns gagging noises which backfires and sends him into a bad coughing fit. His mouth and throat are dry as a desert. A moment later his mom is handing him a large bottle of mineral water and another moment later he’s drunk half of it.

“I think you’re dehydrated, dear. I’m going to go to the store and get you some things.” She busies herself looking for her car keys while Richie is left to wonder at the honor of her bestowing upon him one of the fancy waters she saves for the really bad hangovers. While she’s searching under the post extraction literature on the kitchen island he calls into her, “Just so you know, Mom - I’ve seen ‘Heathers’, so I know for a fact that mineral water turns dudes gay. I’m okay with it because it’s damn refreshing, but I just want you to know that if I become a switch hitter that’s going to be completely on you.” He takes a sizeable gulp while he waits for her reaction. Goading people when he’s afraid they don’t actually love him is kind of _his thing_, and it’s an art he’s especially been honing ever since becoming a teenager. Also, hiding truths in jokes - but that’s less a Richie thing and more an every-wiseass-ever thing.

She ignores him for some lengthy seconds, until she finds her keys, and then addresses him wearily, “I should hide all those R-rated rentals your Dad brings home. Half the time he never sits down to watch them, and then all he’s doing is nurturing your appetite for Hollywood filth.” She kind of believes it (a little) but it’s belied by a sardonic edge that reveals her actual laissez faire attitude on the matter. (On most matters.)

“Well I hope he actually watched that one because it was fucking stellar. Plus, when this botched surgery kills me, he can reenact the ‘I love my dead gay son!’ bit at my funeral. Won’t be a dry eye in the house,” Richie gulps again from the large green bottle and unleashes a belch of truly epic proportions.

Maggie Tozier feels simultaneously like a martyr to be suffering such a profane little shit for a son and like a terrible mother for feeling that way. She’s long given up disciplining his language, but she can’t help but burn to dismantle this apparent new fascination with homosexuality. She doesn’t take it seriously for even a second, because she knows for a fact that her husband has seen many a Playboy vanish without a trace in their house. If she had the wherewithal to search Richie’s bedroom she’s certain she’d find them all there.

She’s at the store long enough for Richie to watch an episode of ‘Tales from the Crypt’ he’d managed to tape on one of HBO’s free preview weekends. He’s seen it a dozen times, because he only managed to get three episodes, but the familiarity is a comfort right now. The tape has kind of a weird line up. His three Tales from the Crypt are sandwiched in between a ‘60 Minutes’ his dad had found particularly riveting and the movie ‘Amadeus’, which was a personal favorite of his mom’s. The night she recorded it she had fully intended to tape it right over his shows, but his dad had stepped in at the last minute with a stay of execution. Wentworth Tozier may hate horror, but the Cryptkeeper’s puns are too glorious for any Tozier man to deny.

She returns just as the episode is ending and beginning its segue into the credits of Amadeus. “You’re watching the skeleton puppet show again, Richie?” she says as she glances at the TV on her way to the kitchen.

“Don’t blame me, it’s your boyfriend Tony Robbins that gave me a taste for horror,” he calls in to her, pressing pause on the remote.

She reemerges after putting everything away and hands him another bottle of water and a Jell-O Pudding Pop. Richie is overwhelmed with emotion. A Jell-O Pudding Pop! Everything he didn’t know he desperately needed. Feeling incredibly close to her at the moment he says, “Actually, I thought we could watch Amadeus. I’m finally ready to sit still for like seven hours of historical costume drama or whatever this dry bullshit is.”

Her face is wry and twisted and folding in on itself, like she doesn’t know what he wants from her or how to respond. “As nice as that sounds, Richie, I told your sister I would make some calls for her about getting a summer job. You’re off the hook, watch whatever you’d like to.”

Richie stares at the dancing lines on the TV, hits pause and then repause because their VCR stops after 5 minutes of being idle, and he bites back everything he wants to say that’s too revealing or too bratty. How his sister is a grown adult who can get her own job, how he never asks her for her time, how he just feels so unbelievably awful and doesn’t really want to be alone anymore. He says, “Please?” kind of quietly, and – _gross_. Please? That’s just gross. But it’s what he says, and he’s startled when his mother brushes the hair off his forehead in a way that feels affectionate.

“Didn’t mean to make you flinch. You’re acting strangely so I was wondering if you had a fever.”

Richie swallows, shakes his head. “Nah, it’s probably just those pain pills. They’re kind of hardcore. Not that I have to tell you that.”

He waits for a response for maybe a full minute before he realizes she’s left the room. A few minutes later the VCR starts to automatically play the tape, and the credits start rolling on ‘Amadeus’. He figures he’ll change it once he’s done with his Pudding Pop, but he gets inexplicably sucked in and watches the whole thing while barely moving a muscle.

It’s great, of course. His mom actually enters the room a few times, looking between the screen and her son curiously. Each time she leaves him with a token of comfort. An ice pack, a heating pad, more Perrier, some scrambled eggs, a fruit cup. But she never sits down to join him.

Richie falls asleep on the couch, because that’s his life now. His sister is thwacking him awake with one hand and holding out the cordless phone to him with the other. He blinks in confusion, not quite understanding the significance of the object in relation to himself. As much as he loves to talk he rarely does so over the phone. He’s tried to keep up correspondence with Beverly, because she’s one righteous dude and she totally gets him, but he’s got this weird sense that the timing is all wrong for it to be her.

Beverly only calls around once a month. It’s a fact that Richie has pieced together subconsciously but is not quite cognizant of. You could chalk it up to the high price of long distance and calling cards, but Richie thinks it’s something somehow more…primal? He’s thinking of this, trying to piece it together, thinks back to last month when he was howling for a fast waxing gibbous moon.

Peggy interrupts his increasingly weird thoughts, impatiently saying, “Take it. It’s your boyfriend. He’s called like 7 times this weekend.” After Richie furrows his brow in exaggerated confusion she adds, “Take it, dummy.” She drops the phone on his lap and leaves him to it.

He picks up the receiver and holds it up to his ear. “Hello?” He sounds hopeful, for reasons he can’t pinpoint.

“It’s about time,” Stan greets him.

“Oh, it’s you.” It’s the archetypal phrase of blatant disappointment over the person with whom you’ve been presented. If Stan had lower self-esteem his feelings would be hurt. Correction – if his self-esteem were subject to slights from Richie Tozier’s mouth then he’d be feeling hurt, but Richie has a grand way of making you feel immune to any offense he may cultivate.

“Yeah, asshole, it’s me – and if I were your boyfriend we’d be breaking up now.” Stan’s irritated tone of voice is like birdsong to Richie’s ears. He thinks if he plays his cards _just _right then Stan will think the response was purposeful and intended solely to piss him off.

“I can’t believe you’d break up with me over the phone, Stanley. After everything we’ve been through together.” Unfortunate associations of what they suffered together the previous summer are the obvious first place their minds go, so Richie rushes to trample those thoughts with, “remember how I gave you pinworms in the first grade? That’s first love shit right there, a boy never forgets his first social disease.” Therein lies the crux of their mystifying but inexorable bond. Not the pinworms, but maybe what they represent. Richie is so so good at being so distractingly awful as to mask their real problems, with only rare detours into the legitimately disturbing. Flashbacks to the great sandbox pinworm outbreak of ‘81 may be unpleasant, but it’s an unpleasant that Stan can deal with.

“If love is measured in parasites I’m pretty sure I got lice from Alice Etna in Kindergarten first,” Stan counters.

“How can you even tell? You got lice soooo many times,” Richie says with a guffaw that hurts his sore jaw and aching head.

“Yeah, thanks for the reminder. It’s like as soon as people see curly hair they can’t keep their grimy, infested hands to themselves.” Stan is actually starting to get close to genuinely upset. A boy so keen on being squeaky clean doesn’t suffer a half dozen outbreaks without a little trauma. “My skin is crawling now, Richie. Let’s move on. Let’s talk about who you were hoping I’d be once you heard the words ‘your boyfriend’.”

Richie pauses just long enough for Stan to wonder if he’s shaken, but still quickly comes back with, “Well, I do have an appointment scheduled with Rabbi Uris for a pre-circumcision consultation. Of course, it’s all a ruse set up to get a closer look at my monster wang.”

“You’re confusing us with the Catholics,” Stan replies tersely. There’s a ton more he wants to say, mostly to discourage ‘Your Dad’ jokes from ever becoming a thing, but if there’s anything he’s learned from years of Tozier & Kaspbrak cat & mouse it’s that the more you react the more repellant it gets.

“Jaysus, what’s a good Jewish boy like you spreading Protestant lies for?” Richie says, going full tilt Lucky the leprechaun. Stan forgets that rolling your eyes isn’t audible, no matter how exaggerated the roll, and his silence unfortunately leaves ample opportunity for Richie to begin singing loudly, “OH STANNY BOY! THE PIPES – THE PIPES I’M LAYING!” 

Stan hangs up, of course. I mean, what other option does he have? But he calls back after about 45 seconds. Richie answers with an amused sounding, “Stan? I’m sorry, I’ll quit.” Stan actually believes him because Richie sounds hoarse as hell, though certainly not penitent. Stan leaves him hanging, waits for Richie to whine out, “Staaaann?” before he finally responds with, “No. This is your boyfriend, Eddie Kaspbrak.”

“Pfft,” Richie says. “As if I would abandon my post as premiere gigolo to the parents of Derry just to couple up with a cowardly deserter like Eddie.” Richie knows a little of the hurt is coming through the jokes, curses the vulnerability that convalescence has saddled him with.

“I wouldn’t say desertion. More like…tactical deferment,” Stan says, sounding a little more earnest than Richie had expected. “Eddie is testing. He’s playing the long game. I actually saw him at Mike’s on Thursday. Apparently Mike’s a recent addition to the ‘acceptable’ list of friends because – get this – they’ve become church buddies.”

Richie is a little stunned. His lizard brain wants to start riffing on this tidbit right away, but his conscious brain needs more facts first. “How the fuck did that happen?” he says, incredulous.

“Apparently, shortly after Eddie got out of complete seclusion, he started insisting to his mother that he wanted to start going back to church again. I guess they used to be avid churchgoers, went every week, until it was discovered that the building had an asbestos problem. Then, while the asbestos was being removed and the building was off limits, the Kaspbrak’s congregation – Methodists, I think - were welcomed in by Grace Baptist. Which is primarily black, so it didn’t take long for most of the congregants to flock down to Dixmont.” Stan could have said “out of town”, but he hates monologuing and thought allowing Richie a moment to make some very obvious jokes about the name of the town would be a good spot for him to pause.

Richie plays his part and makes the jokes. It’s a rather listless list of variations on “dicks mount” that loses steam quickly, and shortly thereafter Stan is able to continue (following his requisite pause of shaming silence, of course.) 

“Eddie’s mom was too lazy to drive that far. Then, once her church got the all clear, she was too lazy to go back to that one either. Her excuse was that she didn’t trust that the asbestos was all removed, and with delicate Eddie’s health she couldn’t risk the chance. What’s the point of attending services if you can just watch televangelists all day, right?” Stan’s voice is the bitter and resentful voice of a kid who’s attended more religious ceremonies than all his friends put together.

“I think I’m getting how he won this one. She can’t send him to Our Lady of Perma-Asbestos without undermining her hysteria, she’s definitely not driving to Dick’s Mount – especially when I give her all the dick she needs right here in Derry -, and suddenly there she is rubbing elbows with actual black people. God is real! Glory HALLELUJAH, PRAISE BE,” Richie manages to finish his sentence with a cringe inducing Southern-Baptist-by-way-of-Song-of-the South vocal flourish that makes the dicking-down-Sonia-Kaspbrak section of his reply seem tasteful in comparison.

Stan is also 14 and has spent a lifetime being casually “cool with” the Jewish jokes from his friends (mainly Richie), a tack he’d chosen before he was old enough to really _get it_. So it doesn’t really occur to him to moralize to Richie about Voices built on ethnic stereotypes. Any more than he’d moralize about the misogyny present as well. So while there’s ample cause to censure him, Stan’s only rejoinder is, “Our Lady of Perma-Asbestos would be a Catholic church, Richie.” 

“Accuracy is the single greatest enemy of chucks, Stanley,” Richie says solemnly.

Stan ignores him, adds, “Also, she’s not personally rubbing elbows. She lets Eddie go alone, but has attended a few times to amass a phone tree of spies to make sure he’s actually where he said he would be. The downside to making those connections is that she became beholden to them. The first time Eddie was an hour late from service she called the church secretary in a panic. It was calmly explained to her that he was perfectly fine because he was spending time with the world’s most polite, conscientious, upstanding young man – Mike Hanlon.”

“He _is_ all that and more,” Richie concurs. “On most men – like you, for example - that would be a total turn off, but Mike makes it work.”

Stan ignores him, adds, “So that’s checkmate. She can’t openly disapprove of golden boy Mike Hanlon without seeming super racist. Which she is, but I guess it doesn’t fit with the image she has of herself if other people think it.”

“Thank you for the intel, Stanley. I sometimes forget what an immense gossip you can be.” Richie’s jaw is starting to hurt from talking too much, even if he’d let Stan do most of the talking (!?!), and he wants to wind up the conversation so he can ruminate on whether good hangs with good friends would ever be worth weekly church attendance. His family also used to attend, but stopped around the time Peggy went to college. Dad had wanted them to keep going (church is good for networking in potential clients) but Mom had become demotivated toward most family activities when Peg went to college. In retrospect it was similar to what happened with the Denbroughs when George went missing, but the comparison does not favor his parents. Peggy was in Boston, not dead. And after the initial freeze the Denbroughs overcompensated with a full turn around, and that smothering of family attention is the main reason Bill is now kind of icing out his friends. Richie gets it, but…

“Richie, are you listening? Please tell me you didn’t actually fall asleep on the phone with me,” Stan interrupts his ruminations.

“Sorry, buddy. Lost in thought,” Richie says. Stan just snorts in response, so Richie continues, “If you were denying what a huge gossipmonger you are I have several examples…”

“No, that’s actually valid. You don’t serve coffee cake to the Women’s Mah-Jongg club in the synagogue social hall every week for half your natural life without internalizing some Yente tendencies. I can admit this to you because if you repeat it to anybody they’ll just think you’re being an asshole,” Stan says calmly, and (Richie thinks) affectionately.

“You’ve got me there, buddy,” Richie assents with a smile and a yawn.

“I’ve got you everywhere,” Stan says, which context dictates should be ‘I’ve got you beat’ but sounds a little more ‘I’ve got you covered’ which is way too sappy for either of them to deal with, so they both hang up without saying goodbye, just like in the movies. 

**Monday**

Monday is mostly terrible. A visit to the dental office to have the sockets cleaned, medicated, repacked. According to Dr. Kramer the onset for his dry socket was as swiftly dramatic as the onset for his impacted wisdom teeth. This seems to be the story of his life, ever since he was young and receiving his third different eye prescription in as many years. Which, coupled with his tendency towards coming home with busted frames, has necessitated a staggering amount of eyeglasses over the years. Considering the expense it’s no surprise that they seem to get progressively uglier with each new pair.

He’s always felt a little bit like his body is hurtling him forward with little regard to what speed is comfortable for him. It wasn’t until his first brush with death that he realized that nobody else saw it that way. He’d been 7 and on a long and boring day of clothes shopping at the mall outside of town, when _finally_ it was Orange Julius time. He was riding the escalator up to the food court and for the first couple feet he let it carry him in placid ascension, but he couldn’t tolerate that for long before he was bolting the rest of the way up. Right at the top he tripped, felt his laces get momentarily caught, and saw his short life pass before his eyes. The machinations had no real hold on him though, and he was quickly ushered safely to the top platform, but not before he was bawling his eyes out. His mom had really laid into him. She’d said, “Why can’t you stand still for 10 seconds, Richie? Even the things that _carry you_, you have to zoom ahead of them!”

He’d tried to explain to her that standing still on the escalator had made him feel somehow sick, but he was 7 and didn’t have the words to describe it. He wouldn’t have the words until his first advanced placement classes, when he learned about inertia. Conversely, that was right around the time that someone else proved that they _did_ sort of get it. After the first time Richie rode double on Big Bill’s maniac bike and he’d questioned, “What the Hell?! Why would anyone actually choose to go that fast?” At first Bill had been confused, said, “S-Sorry. I w-would-would’ve th-thought you’d l-like it. You suh-seem like the speed, uh, speed demon sort.” He wasn’t mocking Richie but he was grinning, wide but rueful and a little exhausted. Richie had responded with cursing up a nervy blue streak a canyon wide, with an animal instinctive road runner speed that led Bill to cut him off with a “Beep-beep” sound that seemed out of fucking nowhere and caused them both to fall into hysterical laughter. Somehow that had proven to Richie that Bill completely got him in a way his family didn’t, that even Stanley didn’t, and it’s the moment Richie would think of when realizing he actually would die for Bill Denbrough.

Bill Denbrough, whose house he walks to after his dental check, whose house now has a ‘For Sale’ sign out front.

Richie stares at the sign for what feels like forever. Minutes, he guesses. Forty seven seconds, to be exact. He doesn’t even realize his feet have ushered him to the door before Bill is answering, bleary eyed and pajama’d. Is it really that early? Richie’s been sleeping strange hours over the last few days and has little concept. At least it’s late enough that Bill’s parents are both at work already.

“What the fuck, Bill? When were you going to tell us? On the way out of town?” Richie is shouting and it’s embarrassingly loud in the quiet neighborhood. Bill looks confused, so Richie points jabbing emphatic gestures at the sign in the yard.

Bill’s gaze darkens in understanding, and he pulls Richie inside just as he sees Mr. Davis across the street peering out the window at them. “I didn’t know it – it was – it was up.” Bill is speaking slow and methodically, the way he’s being taught in his ever increasing speech therapy sessions. Richie remembers the week after Georgie’s funeral he didn’t really hear Bill get out a single complete sentence, the stutter was so bad. That’s when the out of town specialist visits ramped up.

“But you knew it would be eventually, right? So how long have you known?” Such is the bond that Richie feels free to harangue Bill while simultaneously rooting through his kitchen for a glass of water and a snack.

“It t-t-takes uh-a long t-time,” Bill begins, takes a deep breath, “to. To sell a house. Ess-especially here. In Derry.”

“That’s not an answer,” Richie says, his irritation not lessening but lessening in impact by the fact that he’s talking through a pilfered banana, chewing with his front teeth.

“They’ve been talking about it. For. For so long. I never knew if. If they were serious.” It takes Bill almost a full minute of precise speaking to finish the sentence.

Richie knows deliberate silence can be a power move when wielded correctly, but he’s never been able to pull it off himself. Occasionally dumbfounded silence, but usually babbling. He gulps down the rest of the water he’d been sipping and refills it before responding, “Have you told everyone else? You have, haven’t you? I feel like everybody’s keeping me out of the loop this summer.” Ugh, this is why prolonging response is never a good look on Richie. The longer he waits the more the candor builds.

“Mm-m-maybe if – if – if you w-wer-weren’t have-having your-your-your sister suh-screen your-your calls,” Bill snaps out, finally getting irritated with Richie.

The lack of control puts Richie at ease a little bit but the words themselves raise his hackles back up, because he has no idea what the fuck Bill is talking about. “I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about, Billy.”

Bill sits down at the kitchen table, suddenly exhausted by unexpected Richie Tozier before noon, and begins to idly worry a fraying edge on the placemats. “Ever s-since she’s been – been back. She always answers. You never. Never call back.” Bill also falls victim to earnest candor, so toxic to a teenage boy’s sense of self. Thankfully, his body’s natural tiredness causes him to yawn quite authentically, and he’s able to undercut a little of the sincerity. 

Richie smiles, despite being furious at his sister. Secretly, he loves sincerity in others as much as he despises it in himself. You either get to internalize it and feel warm and fluffy, or you get to deflect it with vicious mockery and feel powerful and protected. Or both! The ultimate win-win. This time he can sidestep it entirely and focus on cursing his bitch of a sister. “What a fucking bitch,” he says. 

“She’s n-not actually tuh-telling you – you – you’ve got calls,” Bill surmises, while rubbing at his sleep dusted eyes with balled up fists.

“Well, she did yesterday. She woke me all, ‘it’s your boyfriend, he won’t stop calling, he’s desperate to hear your voice, said something about you knocking him up, says he’s keeping the baby so you better get a job because you’re going to be a daddy’,” Richie prattles, before Bill cuts him off with an emphatic, “Gross. Too far. Stop.”

Now it’s Richie’s turn to pick at the frayed edges of the Denbrough’s placemats, from his standing position, silent for a beat too long to be natural. “Wowza. That was your Last Summer Voice, Big Bill. I’m surprised the wind didn’t pick up outside for atmospheric punctuation.” Richie’s arms are slightly goosefleshed and he doesn’t quite know why. “How is that too far, anyway? Two weeks ago at the arcade I’ve got you dying over Blinky, Pinky, and Inky running a train on Ms. Pac Man, and suddenly the blessed miracle of childbirth is your limit?”

Bill snorts, “M-miracle. I th-think thuh-they call that an, uh, abomin –uh - abomination.”

“Wow, words like that, you’d never be able to tell you ditched out on being in pre-AP English with me.” Richie is still bitter at how few classes he’d had with his friends. It was so boring that his grades jumped from fantastic to exemplary, setting him up for a snoozefest of a year come fall time.

Bill takes steady breaths and falls back into zen tortoise talk mode, “Ms. Arnette. Um. Sh-she said. There, uh. Would be a lot of oral reports. Discouraged me.”

“That fucking sucks of her. You would have killed it. I could have helped you out – I mega killed it.” Richie didn’t choose his words carefully because he was too distracted in trying to ignore the obvious ‘oral report’ joke, so both Richie and Bill furrow their brows at that double “killed it” and the Last Summer vibes it’s stirring up. Richie decides to lean into the avoided joke to deliver them into safer (above ground) waters. “Ms. Arnette loved my oral reports so much she requested encores after class. And every other Thursday during her husband’s bowling league. She says I’m really shaping up to be a cunning linguist.”

The shadow passes from Bill’s face and he rolls his eyes spectacularly. “F-fine. You nuh-knocking up Eddie can’t be worse th-than that. J-just don’t call yourself ‘daddy’, th-that’s my – my main ob-object-objection.”

“Who said anything about Eddie?” Richie pretends to have lost the plot.

“You said your b-boy-boyfriend called,” Bill says, like it’s obvious. “I’m g-glad he’s found a – uh – a way to c-call you. His m-mom’s got an even t-tighter gr-grip on their phone th-than you-your s-suh-sister.”

Richie shrugs. “Peggy’s just thoughtless. Eddie’s mom changed their damn number and spent buckets of cash on a fucking box that tells you who’s calling. Not really in the same league.”

“M-my parents are, erm, think – thinking of getting one. C-caller ID. They think k-keeping track of calls will. Help.” Long pause. “Sell the house.”

Richie’s jittery energy abandons him like wind leaving sails and he plops down in a kitchen chair, legs skidding and screeching on the linoleum in a way that makes both boys cringe. Several comments pass through his mind, mostly various ways to decry his abandonment but keep it couched in facetiousness for plausible deniability against possessing any emotional vulnerability. Not just _possessing_ it, _teeming_ with it. Instead he speaks honest truth, but does so dispassionately. “I think my dad’s gearing up to sell his practice. New guy is breezing through all these tiny steps from apprentice through business partner, and I think ol’ Wenty is getting ideas of foisting the whole thing off on him and getting out of Dodge.”

Bill nods with heavy resignation. “I think. We’ll, uh. All leave. Eventually.”

Richie swallows thickly, a little nauseated and maybe a little dizzy - hard to tell when you’re sitting. “We should be happy to get out of this pit. Or pitifully sad that we’re about to spend our high school years saying goodbye to all our best friends. But I feel weirdly numb about it? Is that just these pain pills or am I right that you’re feeling it too?”

Bill nods with even heavier resignation, stifles another yawn. They both sit there for what Richie’s sure is five full minutes of silence (it’s 63 seconds) before Bill breaks it by saying, “It’s summer. We should be outside. We’re kids, damnit!” They both sit in silence for another eternity (17 seconds) before bursting into semi-hysterical laughing.

Before they fully calm down Richie seizes an opportunity to avoid any more awkward silence, going back to a previous thread. “It was Stan, by the way.”

Bill is missing context, and replies, “I was r-r-really g-going more for R-Richie Tozier in that im-impression, but it could’ve easily b-been any of you.”

“I’m flattered you find me so worthy of emulating, but I meant the phone call. The phone call I got yesterday was from Stan, not Eddie.”

“O-oh. Yeah I g-guess that makes more sense, I - I just heard ‘boyfriend’ and thought…”

“I think Peggy literally officiated a wedding between Stan and me in the 1st grade, so she made the best guess she could with the information available,” Richie says, with a forced casual shrug that definitely verifies for him the fact that he’s dizzy. “Besides, what’s with all the jokes about me and Eds all of a sudden? Last couple years it’s like he’s tucked in the back of my pocket, now I haven’t spent more than an hour with the kid since the ‘80s and suddenly I’ve gone super gay for him?” Richie is ignoring that most jokes about him and Eddie are made by Richie himself, but people agreeing with anything he says is always his first sign to second guess it.

Bill raises a querying brow, “Tucked in the back of your pocket?” He repeats the phrase with enough of Richie’s inflection as to avoid the stutter.

“Like a sidekick! Like – like Scrappy Doo!”

Bill looks at Richie darkly from behind overly long bangs. It’s the kind of look that says ‘Eddie was my best friend before you were’ and ‘I probably would have married him in first grade if I’d had an irreverent older sister to encourage such foolishness’ and ‘just because you and I have more in common now doesn’t mean I’d ever choose you over him.’ You know, _that_ kind of look. “W-wow, Richie. You m-must really miss him t-to be tha-that angry.”

Richie pffts out, “I’m not angry.” He tries to pack it with as much ‘I’m just joking and actually super chill about all of this’ insouciance as he can muster.

“You – you compared him. TO SCRAPPY DOO,” Bill says, like the gravity of this should be obvious. (It kind of is. Richie’s face falls a little.) Bill continues, “Th-that’s the m-meanest thing. You’ve eh-ever said.”

Richie’s face falls the rest of the way. “You’re right. Please don’t tell him I ever said that.” Richie is clenching one of the frayed Denbrough placemats in his fist for emphasis.

Bill wrests it from his hand, assures him, “Your suh-secret’s safe with me.”

Richie gives a resolute nod and his head gets increasingly woozier. The feeling mixes with the sound of another substantial yawn from Bill and the entire atmosphere of the kitchen becomes increasingly soporific. Now that he’s reached peak dizziness Richie sees this as the perfect time to stand abruptly, and he does so with a stumble. He says, “If you’re keeping secrets then definitely don’t tell the others about that time you and I napped together on a beautiful summer Monday morning.”

Richie is walking towards the stairs, grappling along the walls. Bill follows after him, worried Richie is going to faceplant any second now. 

“N-never going to h-h-happen, buddy.” They’re both crowded by the stairs, Richie using the bannister to propel himself up a few stairs.

“Okay. I nap, you can watch me and work on a beautiful and tranquil sun dappled sketch of my likeness.” Richie is shuffling up the stairs backwards, holding onto the railing desperately. It’d be more safe, swift, and sensible to be doing this face forward, but Richie can’t be a smartass without looking to his audience for their reaction.

Bill knows all this, so he gives no facial reaction –just verbal mockery, saying, “Rich, your l-likeness is all kn-knees and elbows. You’d make a shitty muse f-for the suh-same reason you’d make a buh-bad nap partner. All th-those sk-skinny spider limbs. N-no thanks.”

Richie falls briefly backwards, tailbone smarting on the edge of a step, before quickly recovering and shuffling the rest of the way up the steps. He wastes no time rushing into Bill’s room and tossing himself full bodied onto Bill’s bed, delivering a late response of, “Comparing me to a spider, man. That’s low, Bill. Nobody likes spiders.” He says this full of affected woe, as if he were truly saying, ‘Nobody likes _me_.’

“Sorry,” Bill says, taking a seat as his desk. “It’s gotta be B-better than b-b-Bucky Beaver, though.”

“Good point. It’s more metal, for sure. Ok, I accept the new spider characterization, on the condition that you buy my ticket to ‘Arachnophobia’ in a couple weeks. I read all about it in Fangoria and it looks to be a true celebration of my scary as fuck brethren.” Richie tosses his glasses to the side and they land neatly on one of his bedside tables.

“N-no way I’m watching th-that. I’m happy with B-Bucky Beaver and m-motion to reinstate that shit.” Bill turns the chair away from the glaring afternoon sun coming in the windows around his desk. To Richie it just appears Bill is turning to face him, and the sudden show of attention gets Richie to start idly performing the hand motions for The Itsy Bitsy Spider.

“Too late, B-B-Bill. B-B-Bucky B-B-Beaver is dead.” Richie’s fake stuttering was too pathetically bad to piss off Bill, so he let Richie continue without interruption. Richie says, “That’s one thing I can thank my wisdom teeth for – RIP, homies. After they mounted their forward offence those two asshole teeth got crowded in by a bunch of other asshole teeth, and they were no longer notable in their hideousness.”

“I’m surprised you d-don’t have braces yet.” Maybe Bill is making a low blow in light of Richie’s obvious appearance based self-consciousness, but Bill isn’t going to completely let Richie off the hook for his extracurricular fun with his speech impairment.

“Dad says there’s no medical necessity. To quote, ‘your occlusion is adequate. Braces would be vanity, and I’d no more pay for that than pay to shave that bump off your nose.’ Which I didn’t even realize I had. Thanks, Went.” Richie’s voice is bitter and sarcastic, but the mood doesn’t dip too far into the awkward personal realm because Richie’s hands are still Itsy-Bitsying.

“Eyes, Teeth, and N-Nose. You’re a tri-tr-triple threat,” Bill teases.

“I’ve got to have some flaws to offset my animal magnetism. I can’t be pulling in all the quality trim, I’ve got to save some for the rest of you.” Richie gives up on the performance when his ‘out came the sun’ arms turned into ‘let’s fluff the pillows’ arms.

Before Bill can finish his counter, which is lengthy but ultimately boils down to ‘as fucking if’, Richie is already asleep. Because Bill is such a good friend (one with no clue how much longer he gets with them) that he lets Richie sleep on his bed for almost two hours before shaking him awake and letting him ride double on Silver back to the Tozier residence.

Richie is half asleep during that ride home, but the speed is occasionally so incredible that it feels like lift off. The weightless feeling buoys him for the rest of his listless uneventful day.


	2. Chapter 2

**Tuesday**

Richie feels kind of okay when he wakes up on Tuesday morning (1:26pm in the morning). Healing is on the gently sloped horizon, his mom left a clean load of laundry for him outside his bedroom door, and his brain has reactivated its ability for (even predilection towards) steadfast ignorance of unpleasant subjects. Even so far as to prey on a pleasant thing (clean laundry) as its top cause for worry. Richie has been doing his own laundry for three years now, so it’s just – embarrassing.

His sister’s arrival back home, after a night out with the boyfriend, does a lot to joyfully irritate him, gifting him with something substantive to distract himself. She’s actually brought him some day old donuts too, providing him not only with the obvious (donuts) but also with a launchpad for histrionic martyrdom. 

“These are stale as fuck,” Richie says, around a mouthful of bear claw, glaring at his sister with all the disdain he can muster. “Your plan is probably to have me crack a tooth on these. Weaponizing sweets is totally something the disgraced daughter of a dentist would devise to begin their supervillain origin story.”

“Curse a girl for being benevolent to her bratty kid brother. My only ulterior motive, as always, is to get you to shut up for longer than 10 seconds. It’s not my fault you forgot about the straw thing,” Peggy replies, channel flipping disinterestedly.

“I was tired. From doing your job all night.”

“Oh no, the back breaking labor of watching TV for a couple hours while Alannah plays games and puts herself to bed. Tell it to your union why don’t you.” 

Their conversation takes an interlude for Richie to croon ‘Sixteen Tons’ and Peggy to lament the weird and continued effects of her brother’s Golden Oldies phase at age 11. She’ll never forgive the old biddies of Derry for starting that nonsense by calling him ‘their little Buddy Holly’, but Peg gets some satisfaction out of the fact that they all _now_ know him as ‘that unholy terror’.

He prods at the back of his gums, troubled. “I think the reverberations from my rich baritone knocked some of this packing loose. Just another example of me being a little too good at something and being made to suffer over it.”

“Your suffering will be legendary, even in Hell,” Peggy responds, her bored tone belying the gravity of her words.

“My sister the Cenobite. All my suspicions confirmed. Actually, speaking of you being a creature of unspeakable evil, and speaking of me doing your babysitting job for you - where in the hellraising fuck is my money for that?” 

“Actually, I’m glad you brought that up. Because I may have accidentally spent all that money. I figured with you being all infirm you wouldn’t be able to spend it for a while yet anyway. But if you cover for me again tonight I will give you the whole pot.”

“First off, you’re an asshole. Secondly, why tonight? Why do they need a babysitter in the middle of the week? They just had a date night on Friday. Ooh, I wonder if it’s so they can go to the new Red Lobster that opened thirty minutes away. You’d think in Maine people wouldn’t be so desperate for chain joint seafood, but I hear that place is fucking jumping on the weekend. Do you think they’ll bring me some of the cheddar biscuits?” Richie says it all in a swift babble that feels barely connected.

“They’re not bringing _you _shit, Richie, they’re going to think it’s _me_ doing the babysitting. Also, I think they’re going to marriage counseling or something. It’s well known in the babysitting community that a standing date night combined with a mid-week leave is a definite case of gluing together a broken marriage.” Peggy has stopped channel flipping, leaving it on Family Feud. As soon as the remote settles on the couch cushion between them Richie reaches for it and starts the indecisive ritual all over again.

“You don’t think it’s risky to lie? Alannah could just tell her parents that you left her all alone with the teenage terror of Derry and we’ll both be out of a fat stack of cash.”

“Nah. Alannah and I have an understanding. She’s never tattled about Tre coming over, she won’t about this either. So…I’ll drive us over, say goodbye to Dec ‘n’ Ann, and book it 5 minutes after you’re done. They have to drive pretty far, so it’s a 6 to midnight kind of deal. 40 bucks, and you can keep it all this time.”

Richie pauses to consider it. He is feeling marginally better, after all, but knows he’ll have to forgo the painkillers to responsibly watch after a 6 year old. He’s not sure that he’s ready for all that. However, 40 dollars is 40 dollars. So, yeah, fuck it. “Yeah, fuck it, I’ll babysit. I’m an excellent babysitter. I mean, look at my friend group. I got in a fight with Bill last summer and the group completely fell apart without me. I’m a quietly stabilizing presence.”

Peggy snorts. “You’ve never been a quiet anything a day in your life. Well, we used to be able to get some peace when you were sleeping, but ever since I’ve been back you’ve been fighting Freddy Krueger in your dreams every other night.” She doesn’t miss the surprised scowl. Maybe he thought no one knew about the reoccurring nightmares. She feels a little bad about it, because they must be _actually_ bothering him if he’s not gleefully regaling everyone with the most bitchin’ gory details the next day.

Richie snorts. “Nah, Freddy and I are cool. We just get in riff offs, pun each other into a reluctant truce, and move on. It’s that fucking Chucky doll that haunts me at night. Dolls are scary enough on their own, but make one a ginger on top that? Yee-ikes!” Richie doesn’t leave time for Peggy to react with irritation about insulting her own (red, like their mother) hair color. He doesn’t leave time for her to mock him about his (thankfully false) fear of a child’s toy. He barrels along, returning to the previous topic, “Plus, I never said I was quiet, just that my stabilizing properties were. I can be _loudly_ telling you a hilarious joke about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles running a train on April O’Neil but then _quietly_ uplifting you with camaraderie and shit.”

“Ok, sure. You’re the backbone that holds your loser friends together. I’m sure that’s why you’ve been spending so much time with them this summer.” Peggy is getting more and more irritated with her little brother, is even becoming tempted to do her own babysitting job just to avoid being in cahoots with him any further.

“It’s complicated,” Richie grouses. “I was probably _too_ supportive. Gave them all way too much confidence. It’s hard to raise kids. You know, I had to give most of them a proper birds and bees talk - and do they appreciate it? Fuck no! Should have waited until Mike came into the picture, have him put on an educational sheep sex show. Man, I miss Mike. When he inherits that farm I hope he turns it into a petting zoo. I would take Allie, because I’m an _excellent_ babysitter, and she would love it. She’d love Mike, he’s the literal best.”

“Is that the one with the stutter or the one from Canada?” she responds.

“Canada?” Richie sounds so confused that Peggy momentarily wonders if he even knows what Canada _is_. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that her little brother is not actually stupid, just seemingly desperate to appear as such.

“Yeah, Rich. Your make believe friends that always have a convenient excuse to never actually hang with you. The one with a speech impediment, the one whose mother you’re banging. What else? See, I just can’t imagine anyone besides Stan would willingly subject themselves to your presence, so the rest must be a painfully transparent ruse. Like, I knew _three_ separate guys in college who all conveniently had girlfriends in Canada. It’s apparently the go-to excuse for being too much of a dweeb or too much of a homo to have an actual human girlfriend.” By now Peggy is getting murderously irritated with Richie’s flipping through channels aimlessly, because it’s fine to do it yourself but torture to watch someone else do it. He finally stops, but inexplicably leaves it on an infomercial.

“Tragic. Too dweeby or too homo. Why’s it got to be one or the other? Ooh, that gives me an idea!” Richie shows some of his usual high energy enthusiasm by suddenly dropping to the carpet to rifle through their meager VHS collection. Richie wishes they had more, but his mom won’t devote more than one small cabinet to them because she thinks they’re an eyesore. While he searches he continues speaking, “Sometimes I forget that you left before I started hanging out with Buffalo Bill and Eddie the Kid. They’re definitely both real, and neither of them are Mike – Mike’s the perfect one. Because I haven’t known him long enough for him to disappoint me. Just recently he got us into ‘RoboCop 2’ without parental supervision because he looks like he’s 17. To Doreen the ticket lady he probably looks 25, because she’s probably never seen a black kid before in her life.”

While Richie is inserting a tape and returning to the couch Peggy’s face is falling flat in realization. “Oh, damn. Maybe one of your friends _is_ real after all. A couple days ago some black kid rang the doorbell, asking after you. I sent him away,” she admits.

“What the hell, woman!? Why would you do that?” Richie’s irritation causes him to way over punch the tracking button on the remote and everything on the TV is orange blobs and fuzzy white lines.

“You were passed out, as usual. Also, I may have assumed that he just wanted to lure you outside to kick your ass.” She yanks the remote out of his hand to fix the tracking.

“Wow, Peggy. That’s racist as hell,” Richie says, punching his voice up with some self-righteous indignation and enjoying it mightily. He _never_ gets to argue from the moral highground! It’s intoxicating.

Peggy has just completed a liberal arts education and considers herself very much a woman of the ‘90s and can’t _conceive_ of a universe in which she’s racist. She does feel bad, though, because – it certainly doesn’t look good, the _optics_ and all. Still, she’s not going to stand for Richie of all people being the one to shame her for it. “No. I probably assumed you made some racist joke and that he 100 percent understandably wanted to kick your ass in retaliation.”

“Well, under that logic, you should have let him kick my ass! By not allowing him to do so you were complicit in the racism, thus you are still racist.” Richie is jazzed to be winning this argument, but he’s actually kind of earnestly pissed off as well. To think of all the quality Loser time his sister has robbed him of lately.

“Oh, cram it, you little shitheel. Also, seriously, what the hell is it that we’re watching?” Peggy is confusedly trying to figure out the show mid-skit. Richie had thrown on a tape of ‘Kids in the Hall’ (taped over one of his parents’ PBS Great Performances, a betrayal he hopes they never discover). It’s another great and cherished get from a free weekend of HBO. Instead of answering her question, he just gestures lazily to the screen, where Dave Foley is resplendently painted and bewigged. “_That’s_ my Canadian girlfriend,” he says.

“You do know that’s a guy, right?” Peggy is _almost_ seriously worried, because she’s not looking forward to the family drama involved in Richie needing _yet another_ upgraded eyeglass prescription. 

Richie shrugs, nonchalant. “Hot is hot.”

*

It’s not long after finishing the tape that it’s time for them to get ready to go to the Nell residence. Things unfold like a repeat of Friday night, except Richie is simultaneously more lucid and more pained. He has the hydrocodone jammed in his pocket in case of emergency, but he’s trying to stay straight for the night.

Hellos and goodbyes are given with the Nells, Peggy stays for five minutes before taking off, and once again Richie gets to bask in the glow of their far superior television. Alannah’s in no mood to remain captive to the screen, so the order of the night becomes passive MTV watching and active Barbie playing.

“I’m not supposed to watch MTV,” Alannah says, matter of fact. She’s holding Wedding Day Midge and Richie has Bridesmaid Barbie, and both women seem to be stuck in an impromptu dance routine that’s subject to the whim of whatever song is playing. To Richie’s dual delight and despair ‘Like A Virgin’ makes an appearance. While the content itself is inappropriate, it _is _an appropriate visual reference for a doll in a wedding dress – and it’s so much easier to choreograph for than ‘You Can Call Me Al’ or ‘Fast Car’.

“I’m not allowed to play with Barbies,” Richie responds. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

“Is it because you’re a boy?” she asks.

“According to society at large, yes. According to Wentworth and Margaret Tozier, it’s because I made creative changes to Peggy’s old dolls that I would call _improvements _but they called _mutilations_.” He says this while carefully considering between the orchid or chartreuse pumps for his Barbie’s inevitable outfit change. Because of his squinting attention to the plastic accessories he misses the worried look Alannah shoots her Barbie, not entirely sure if he can be trusted with her anymore.

“I hope you didn’t cut their hair. It seems like a good idea at the time, but it never is,” Alannah intones, with the wisdom of experience. 

Richie finally settles on the chartreuse, but by then Alannah has already moved on to another occupation. He thinks he probably lost a little time when the eye strain and intense focus started sending pain signals to the rest of his face like a chain reaction of agony. Every nerve ending in his head seems directly linked to the nerves still partially exposed in his jaw. It sucks, because he _was_ feeling better and he _was _having fun and he’s ostensibly making money. This is really making him confront the extremely bad judgment he and his sister showed in thinking he could watch an eight year old, because apparently even good eight year olds occasionally get gel pen on their parent’s ecru carpet while fervidly Spirographing on the living room floor.

Just watching her tiny fist making furious arcs and circles is making him dizzy. The dizziness leads to nausea, so he shuffles on wobbly legs into the bathroom. He runs the water, so Alannah won’t hear, and vomits as gently as he can. After flushing and rinsing his mouth at the sink he jams his hands into his back pocket and pulls out the pain pills, dry swallowing two of them with great difficulty. If he were thinking straight he would have used the readily available water source, the one his hands were still damp from cupping under, but his judgment was poor enough to take two hydrocodones while minding a child, so clearly his judgment has long since abandoned him.

He drops back to the floor, unsure if he’s going to lose it again. He then stays rooted there for some time, cursing his decision to wear shorts, with his exposed legs sticking to cold linoleum like an insect on a glue trap. This is now the lowest moment in his life since the sewers, so it’s appropriate that the moment finds him leaning against a toilet. He can hear the gentle rushing water sound of the pipes, mixing rhythmically with the muffled music playing from the other room. ‘Wishing Well’ is finishing up, seguing too perfectly into ‘Cruel Summer’, both sounding more like sinister calliope music than mainstream pop. Richie questions the reality of these perceptions because it all seems too perfectly orchestrated to flashback him to visions of Last Summer. 

Strangely enough it’s images of Beverly’s blood soaked bathroom that fade in and out with his consciousness. He doesn’t even remember that he hadn’t been there to see it. It feels more like a memory than imagination, and the faux memory is projecting itself onto the Nell’s bathroom in a pulsing glow from halogen white to rosy pink to primary red and back again, expanding and tightening like the rhythm of a heartbeat.

His face is wet, streaming saline that burns his chapped lips and passes into a mouth that’s already pennies and bile, and he screams a little bit because he’s suddenly _positiv_e that his eyes are bleeding. After a lifetime of fighting against them it feels like an apt culmination, like his eyes were always meant to be the culprits that end him.

His hands ball up and press into his eyes, his glasses floating precariously over his fists, and an abrupt knock startles Richie into knocking them to the floor.

“Are you decent?” Alannah asks, from the other side of the door.

The inexplicable phrasing cracks Richie up, almost shocking him out of his terror. He responds, “Never. I’m not naked or anything though.” His voice sounds so _thick_ to his ears, shocking him further still.

She tentatively opens the door, only three quarters of the way because one of his ankles is in the path, and enters the bathroom. “What’s wrong, Richie?” she asks, worried but not panicked.

“My eyes are hemorrhaging,” he responds, like it’s a plain fact.

“Is that what grown-ups call it when they’re crying? To not sound like babies?” she punctuates the questions by picking his glasses up, he can feel this as they knock against his knees on the way into her hands.

Richie pauses before his answer, rubs at his eyes some more and _considers it_. “My eyes aren’t actually bleeding, are they?”

Alannah gives a tiny gasp. “I don’t know. Let me see them!” she says, and knocks her hands against his hands to make him move them. She _would_ just pry them away but she’s holding something in each hand.

Richie slowly removes his fists and opens his eyes tentatively. He blinks rapidly at the onslaught of bright light, but the lack of red verifies his suspicions about the lack of blood. When he finally gets his vision back he blurrily sees Alannah standing there, holding his glasses and an oblong hunk of plastic.

“Sorry. I guess I was just crying regular. Like a baby.” He holds out his hands for her to hand him his glasses, but she hands him the oblong plastic hunk instead.

“Call an adult,” she says, definitively. This close he can see the oblong plastic is a cordless telephone. When he looks back at her he can vaguely make out that she has put his glasses on her own small face.

“Woooowww. If I had to wear these I would throw up and cry too,” she says, giggling, giving Richie a reminder that even nice kids can be fucking brutal. He considers explaining the concept of refractive errors and prescriptions, but decides to let it go and take her advice instead.

Richie starts to dial the shop where his sister’s boyfriend works. Muscle memory takes over. No need to search for the number or look at the keypad. Richie’s called the record shop for reasons both legitimate (“You guys got the new Weird Al album in yet?”) and illegitimate (“Hello, young man. My husband Eugene and I just saw a delightful Edie Brickell & New Bohemians concert on a recent expedition to Boston. We’re looking for something by the opening act, this charming bongo player named Hunt. Oh dear, do you alphabetize by first or last name? I just can’t remember that first name. Something M. Mark? Or maybe Matt? Oh! Mike, it was Mike. First name Mike, last name Hunt. If you’re stuck manning the phones maybe you can call it out to one of your stock boys…”) You get the idea.

Richie asks, “Is Tre there?” when one of the other employees answers. They reply, “No sir, he’s off tonight. He’ll be back in tomorrow. Is there a problem?” Richie reels at being called sir, and remembers again how off his voice is right now. He doesn’t have time to think of something great to take advantage of this prime chance to prank, but still improvises something. “No, young man. This is his probation officer. Just making sure he’s on the straight and narrow and staying gainfully employed. Have a great night.” Click.

Richie doesn’t know how to find his sister if she’s not at the shop. If this were her high school days she’d be loitering at The Root Beer Stande, but now that she can legally drink _actual _beer Richie thinks they’re more likely to be at one of the local watering holes. He doesn’t know a thing about those, but silently vows to rectify that gap in his Derry knowledge. With his recent growth spurt he might even be nearing ‘semi-believable fake id’ range. (He’s not. He’s definitely not. Height alone does not a 14 year old obfuscate.) 

He’s definitely not going to call his parents. Even if he could reach them they wouldn’t be much help, and the shame they’d heap on him would certainly not help his summer improve one iota. He can’t think of a single adult whose shaming he _could_ tolerate, so he calls the next best thing.

“Hello, Mrs. Uris. Is Stanley home?”

“Hello Richie. I thought I told you not to practice your Voices on us. This deep timbre you’re experimenting with is very unsettling,” she replies.

Richie is torn between not wanting to appear weak and not wanting to appear creepy. Mrs. Uris has seen him cry already, and she nearly banned him from their residence the one time she overheard an off color joke about Eddie’s mom, so he goes with a weak leaning compromise. “Sorry, Mrs. Uris. I’m sort of recovering from an illness. Plus, I was just pretending to be my sister’s boyfriend’s probation officer, so my voice is kind of stuck like this. Please don’t take it as any disrespect to you or yours.”

She sighs, and hands the phone off to Stan, who must have come to the hallway mounted phone after overhearing his mom’s side of the conversation.

“Haven’t I warned you about this?” Stan sounds angry, so his voice cracks somewhere in the middle. Richie snickers quietly. He really thought Stan was through that particular vagary of puberty, so hearing it come out again feels like a personal gift just for him.

“Relax, Staniel. I’ve just been like puking and crying myself into oblivion, not pulling a heavy breather routine on your mom.” Richie bites back his further quip, harkening back to their Sunday phone conversation, “besides, you know I’ve gone full on Elmer Fudd, and _now_ I’m hunting me some Rabbi.” Or maybe he _didn’t _bite back the response, because Stan hangs up on him.

Richie waits 10 seconds then redials, greeting with a, “sorry sorry sorry. I’ll behave. Actually, I need your help. Wait, this is Stan, right?”

Long pause. “It’s Stan. You have 15 seconds.”

“Ok so… I’m babysitting. It’s kind of a surrogate babysitting thing. Peggy is the official babysitter, but I’m the man on the ground. Like, right now, literally. I’m on the bathroom floor and I don’t feel good and I took too many pain pills and will you come over here and help me so nothing happens to this innocent 6 year old on my watch?”

Alannah is looking at him witheringly, or maybe that’s just a trick of the lens because she’s still wearing his glasses and just sort of dizzily walking around the bathroom. “I’m 8,” she corrects.

“Yeah, okay, she’s 8. So she’s practically a pre-teen and doesn’t need that much minding. But I think I do right now. I can’t reach Peggy. Or my parents,” he lies. “So can you come over? The Nells are just two-ish blocks from you.” It’s Derry, so everything is sort of two-ish blocks from everything else.

Stan hesitates. “I’ve kind of got plans. Maybe you could ask Bill. He’s responsible. Good with kids.”

“Seriously, Stan? Even if I can get him on the horn and he’s not busy with family Monopoly or whatever I think it’s pretty obvious why _Bill_ is a bad choice.” Richie doesn’t want to say it in front of Alannah. He doesn’t really know how the death of a classmate is addressed when you’re in Kindergarten (1st, 2nd grade? He doesn’t know), if their teachers told them that Georgie went to live at a farm or whatever, so he doesn’t want to spell out the ‘devastating reminder of his dead little brother’ factor for Stan. 

Stan pauses, finally gets it. “Ohhh. Right. Georgie.” The very reason that he knows Bill is good with kids. He feels ashamed that disaster Richie had more emotional maturity and critical thinking skills than him at this very moment, but he’s distracted, squishing the phone between his ear and shoulder while attempting to tie a necktie.

“Right,” Richie affirms. He’s starting to drift away from the conversation because he’s so thirsty, but maybe if he can get Stan over there he can get Stan to water him. For some reason Richie is imagining Stan hydrating him with a silver ladle, instead of the much more reasonable idea of handing him a drinking glass. Before he can imagine the rest of his friends feeding him grapes and fanning him with palm fronds he remembers the thread of the conversation and asks, “Mike?”

“Probably already almost in bed. He’s got to get up at 3am to set up for the farmer’s market. Every Wednesday til October.”

Richie hisses. “I’m the one slumped on the bathroom floor because I have exposed nerve endings in my head, and I’m still glad I’m not him. That’s brutal.”

“Jesus, Richie. Do you seriously need help?” Stan sounds legitimately worried. Oops. Not what Richie was aiming for _at all_. 

“Nah. Tell me more about those plans you have,” Richie deflects. Alannah is slumped leaning against the tub and rifling through a damp bucket of bath toys. His glasses are hanging askew off her face, almost unnoticed, while she seemingly inventories the items from the bucket. Richie thinks if _she’s _fine then he must be too.

Stan sighs and admits, “Chess tournament at the JCC. It’s the semi-finals. I’m playing Ada Rosen and she’s a beast, so I need to get going if I’m going to be there in time to absorb the feel of the room.”

“Nerd,” Richie scoffs. “Wait, is she the one you said was, you know, _developing_? Nevermind, nerd it up my player. Don’t forget to make intense eye contact with her while stroking the bishop. I can only assume that chess chicks are super into that.”

“If you’re capable of being that actively disgusting I can only assume that you are absolutely fine and perfectly capable of fending for yourself. If not, call Ben. He’s too nice to tell you no.” Stan is on the verge of hanging up when Richie says, “wait wait wait! Do you have his number?” Richie knows he could look it up in the phone book, because that’s what he does every time he wants to call Ben, but phone books are _effort _and Stan is right there.

Stan, who has a slip of paper in his wallet with all the Losers phone numbers printed neatly, is ready to give Richie the number before Richie is ready to hear it. Normally Richie has a good short term memory for numbers but right now his brain isn’t working quite right, so he might have to write it down. Suddenly, inspiration strikes. He sees a colorful array of chunky bath crayons laid amidst the rest of the playtime flotsam strewn across the bathroom floor. “Allie!” he exclaims, pointing at the crayons. “Write this number down for me. On the wall there. Go ahead, Stan.”

“842,” Stan begins, dubiously. Richie stops him to instruct Alannah, “8-4-2.” Stan begins again but Richie stops him and Alannah both. “Stop, both of you! Stan, slower. Think like _the turtle_.” Richie pauses, hyper focused on how he said _the_ turtle instead of _a_ turtle, but his immediate attention drags him away to beg Alannah, “_Please_ not red. _Any_ color but red.”

She’s paused over the back wall of the tub, the top circle of the 8 in red – she shrugs and drops the red crayon, finishes off the bottom of the 8 in blue. Richie nods at her and she continues with the 4 and 2. Then all three of them work in tandem to get the number written down.

Stan says, “Am I understanding this correctly that you just let her draw that number on the wall? You really do need help.”

Richie explains, “It’s on the wall of the tub.” Stan’s silent so long that Richie’s waiting for a dial tone. He adds, “Fully washable.”

Another long pause before Stan finally responds, “I see. Well, uh. Give Ben a call. I’m running late, so. Goodnight.” Richie _does_ get to say goodbye before he hangs up, but it’s a near thing.

He pivots back to the matter at hand. Thanks Alannah for her beautiful work, asks for and receives his glasses back (so he can actually _read _the number), and begins to dial.

Richie is glad that Ben answers and not his mother. She’s super nice and laidback, but Richie still doesn’t know her well enough to know what tone to aim for. Sometimes he still feels that way with Ben himself. The friendship is still relatively new, and Richie doesn’t know if his constant teasing actually hurts Ben or not.

“Heya, Heystack.” Not that he’d stop the teasing, even if he knew. This new nickname is kind of a reach, the reference being obscurely old fashioned. Sometime last year he’d been watching wrestling on TV with the old man (guilty pleasure) when a recently-deceased-retrospective aired for a massive wrestler from the ‘60s named ‘Haystack’ Calhoun. Richie inexplicably found it so hilarious that he couldn’t get it out of his head. Not the tragic passing of the man himself, but the nickname. The next time Richie saw Ben Hanscom he attached the nickname to him inexorably, forever and ever amen. 

“Oh, hey Richie. You sound strange. If it wasn’t for the weird nickname I wouldn’t have realized it was you.” Ben’s tone is pleasant and curious. Richie wants to wrap himself in it like a Mr. Roger’s cardigan, because damned if that isn’t the same vibe he gets from Ben. Richie’s rarely had experience with people who are so – _receptive_. Sometimes it makes him nervous, but right now it feels – _right_.

Richie feels the direct and literal method will be the best course forward. He thinks back to the summer reading list, which he finished in the first two weeks of break to get it well out of his way, and summons his very best Ernest Hemingway.

“I need help. I’ve been felled by a grave malady and have taken watch of a young child. She is 8. I’m on the bathroom floor and feel like movement is an insurmountable task. Wait, no. I think this is too florid to be Hemingway? They assigned us Fitzgerald too. Remember when Mr. Swenson said he was going to get the Jazz Age out of our way before highschool because it’s ‘reductive’ but will prepare us for ‘actual literature’ like training wheels? Anyway, Jazz Age is appropriate, as I am currently seeing how the other half lives. Do you know the Nells have a 27 inch television? You probably don’t know the Nells though, so who cares. What was I saying? Ah - I was gonna say I bet you already finished your reading list too, but I _double_ bet you’re actually _savoring_ them or something. Really dragging the whole thing out.” Richie finally pauses for a response, but just like his call with Stan he’s getting a long stretch of silence.

“Um. Okay, Richie. I don’t know what most of that meant, but I think maybe you need to see a doctor.” Ben sounds so nice about it, but it just pisses Richie off because all he wants is for one of his friends to come babysit him while he babysits the child his sister is supposed to be babysitting. Is that so much to ask?

Richie hears sudden rustling and muffled background talking, and then a new voice emerges like a bolt out of the blue.

“Richie, what the fuck is going on?” Eddie Kaspbrak, ladies and gentlemen. “What did you say to Ben? Whatever face he’s making it’s not his usual ‘Richie Tozier – what are ya gonna do!’ face. This is more like a ‘someone get an adult’ face.”

“That’s what I said,” Alannah adds to the conversation. Apparently Eddie’s pitched loud enough for her to hear from a few feet over.

Now it’s time for Richie’s silence. It isn’t until Eddie impatiently tuts out a “well?!” that Richie responds, “Are you real?”

“Yes, Richie, I’m for real. What’s going on?” Now he sounds a little more worried than angry, which is _much _worse really.

“I didn’t ask if you were _for_ real, I asked if you were real. Like, an actual living breathing spitfire of righteous Eddie Kaspbrak right here in my ears right now?” It’s like as soon as Eddie came on the line Richie’s shaky perceptions evened out pleasantly to ‘dreamlike, but not a nightmare’. Of course, a softened mien is both naïve and premature where Eddie Kaspbrak is concerned.

“Are you fucking high? I thought those Junior guys wouldn’t sell you pot because they said your glasses made you look like a narc,” Eddie says.

“Edward Kaspbrak, you need to chill it with the language young man. Alannah is able to hear you. You may look and sound like a cartoon mouse, but your voice _carries_.” Richie is smiling. It makes his face ache. 

“Who is Alannah?” It’s the first thing he’s said quietly since snatching the phone away from Ben.

“She’s –” Richie begins, but Eddie cuts him off quickly with a return to shouting. “Probably the one who managed to score that weed for you two, right? Seriously, I can’t fucking believe you! You call up Ben, probably to prank call him, but you and your new girlfriend are too damned stoned to say anything even remotely funny. To top it off you have the nerve to give _me_ a language warning. _You_! To _me_. That’s just fucking poetic or some shit!”

Richie can’t help it. He just starts laughing, hysterically, then grabbing his jaw and saying, “ow ow ow.” Thankfully, Eddie is not as quick to hang up as Stan, because unlike Stan he won’t forgive Richie and call him back 30 seconds later. Eddie is not content to end an argument that easily.

Richie doesn’t notice it happening, but Alannah ends up with the phone somewhere during his hysterics, and calmly informs Eddie, “Hi, I’m Alannah. I’m not his girlfriend. I’m 8 years old. D.A.R.E. says we shouldn’t do drugs, so I’m not going to. He’s funny, but I think he’s sick too. So will your mom come help him?”

Richie doesn’t hear Eddie’s response. Presumably he’s lowered the decibel level to avoid deafening a small child. Richie’s now officially cut out of this conversation, but he still feels the need to say, “Alannah, you do a much better Hemingway than me. So literal, so precise.”

She ignores him, telling Eddie, “I think it’s sad that your mom doesn’t like Richie._ I_ think he’s nice, but even if I didn’t like him I would still help put him out if he was on fire - and she should too. He’s not on fire, though.”

Richie misses most of the rest of the conversation because he’s busy snickering and humming ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’. He vaguely registers Alannah reciting her address, but by the time he realizes what that might mean he’s distracted by her beginning to wash the phone number off the bathtub wall. She works bottom right to upper left, so the last image he sees is of the red upper circle of the 8 dripping down the wall like cartoon blood before finally disappearing all together. He stares at the gleaming white expanse, afraid if he closes his eyes it’ll be back to dripping blood once he opens them again.

**BEEP. BEEP.** Richie’s eyes are startled open when he hears the obnoxious sound.

“It’s going to die,” Alannah says, ominously. Richie’s starting to get some real kids-in-‘Nightmare-on-Elm-Street’ vibes from her. It’s not _her_ fault that horror movies have effectively rendered all children somewhat creepy. If she starts singing, even _humming_, he’s so out of there.

**BEEP. BEEP.** Richie doesn’t know where it’s coming from, but he’s taking it personally.

Alannah sighs, finally getting bored of his melodrama. “C’mon, you’ve got to put the phone back on the charger. It’s gonna die and I can’t reach it.” She’s poking him on the chest with the blunt antenna, trying to spur him into action.

The phone! Of course! Richie sighs out his relief. “If you can’t reach the charger how did you get it down?” he questions. He’s pleased that his mind is present enough to ask such a cogent question. Helps him feel better about the fact that he still can’t move a single muscle.

“Mom leaves it off the charger when she’s gone, so I can make emergency phone calls myself,” Alannah says. “In case something happens to the babysitter. This is the first time anything’s ever happened, though. My last babysitter was really good, but her family moved when all those kids died.”

Richie groans. Shame for being such a bad babysitter, trauma from the reminder of dead kids, and total gut twisting dread at the notion of actually standing up. He makes an aborted move to get up, bony elbow digging into the toilet seat for leverage, but slumps back down in tailbone crushing surprise when he hears rapid knocking on the front door.

“C’mon,” Alannah starts prodding again. “I’m not allowed to answer the door. You have to do it.”

Richie only musters the strength to finally stand because he’s afraid if he stays still she’ll punch a hole straight through his clavicle. He shuffles to the door, trying to avoid full on stumbling, and pulls it open without a thought to the previously mentioned peephole.

He doesn’t know why he’s surprised that it’s Eddie. It follows, after all. But it’s been _so long _and he’s _so royally fucked up_ right now, so he does the only thing he can think of and reaches out a spindly E.T.-esque finger to gently boop Eddie on the nose.

Richie didn’t know that eyes could simultaneously cross and shoot lasers of rage at the same time. Richie puts up his hands in the classic pose of surrendered defense, “I’m just making sure you’re real.”

“Yeah, I’m _real_. Real annoyed,” Eddie fumes, a little witless and ineffectual himself. Five seconds in Richie’s presence and he’s already fallen back into step with him. Where Richie shuffles Eddie will shuffle back. Before entering the Nell’s house he turns back, flaps a dismissive gesture to a car parked out front, overlong sleeves making the gesture especially muppety (and especially endearing to Richie.)

“Private chauffeur, Eds? That’s so classy,” Richie says, stumbling back to allow Eddie full entrance. 

“It’s just Ben’s mom. This place is only like two-ish blocks from their place. I would have made her come in and check on you, but I didn’t want you to embarrass me and she has to get to work soon anyway. Graveyard shift. Ben gets to be so self-sufficient - it makes me so damn jealous. Now_ he_ would be a good choice for babysitting. Assuming you’re going with a male babysitter, which frankly I think is really weird.” The door is shut, but they’re still all grouped in the hallway while Eddie goes full Dr. K. on him. Mostly just intent inspection of his pupils and feeling his forehead for fever. Richie hasn’t felt warm or cold, maybe tepid and clammy, but he can feel heat inexplicably rising to his face and falsely coloring the amateur medical assessment he’s receiving.

Eddie’s brow is furrowed in concentration, but he’s not speaking - like he doesn’t expect Richie’s answers to provide any clarification. Richie thinks that’s fair. So he cuts the tense atmosphere by volunteering, “they took my wisdom teeth out because I was just too wise already,” and opening his mouth as wide as he can.

Eddie recoils, almost knocks into a hovering Alannah when he steps back. “What the Hell, Richie? I thought your dad was a dentist, not a fucking butcher.”

Richie ignores that, “Is the Tootsie Pop owl actually wise, or is he just an owl?”

Eddie doesn’t want to get distracted and drawn in, but it’s just too good of a question to ignore. “Wise, definitely. He’s got one of those graduation caps, so at the very least he’s high school educated? That’s not bad _for an owl_. Birds are usually pretty dumb. Like, ‘bird brain’ is not a phrase for no reason.” 

“Don’t let Stanley hear you say that. He’ll subject you to a dissertation on the speech patterns of the grey parrot, or his thesis on the puzzle solving abilities of the common crow.”

“Don’t I know it. God, remember that bird book he carried everywhere he went? The best worst thing you ever did was shame him into leaving it behind when we started middle school. Like we’re all not targets enough.”

“Yeah, like don’t get me wrong, I love him just the way he is. But do you think he’d be playing erotic chess with a chesty girl named Ada tonight right now as we speak if he was still toting that thing around? No way! You know how when Coach Wallace was chaperoning the Back to School dance last year he was all like ‘leave room for Jesus!’ whenever a guy and girl’s pelvis got within spitting distance of each other? Chaperone Stan would have been all like ‘leave room for the bird book!’”

Eddie laughs. He can’t help it. But then his face falls slightly, “I don’t remember the Back to School dance. I wasn’t back to school yet.”

“Yeah,” Richie says, rubbing nervously at the back of his neck. They’re all distracted out of the moment when the phone Alannah’s holding lets out an obnoxious death knell of a beep, and she walks over to the living room, expecting to be followed, and points to the carriage on the mantle. It’s in between an Olan Mills family photo and the swear jar.

“Oh dang! I almost forgot about the swear jar. Ally, have you been keeping a running total on him? Use our sweet boy Eddie as an example from which to learn. He used to be innocent like you, couldn’t even conceive of expletives in his inner monologue, and then he met the great corrupting force you see barely standing before you today. He’s _ruined_ now, obviously. I’ve ruined him. It’s too late for a redemption arc. It’s sad, but we can both use him as a reminder of how to be better than our most base inclinations.” Richie _wants_ to be careful not to scare Eddie off, but his impulse control is shit at the best of times and this is _not_ the best of times.

For some reason Alannah has gone shy. Richie thinks she’s not going to respond, so he’s almost back to barreling on when she squeaks out, “He doesn’t have to pay the swear jar because he gave me tickets at Chuck E. Cheese. He had like a million of them. I got a Baby Starbow. She’s my third favorite pony.”

Richie and Eddie are both dumbfounded. Eddie breaks first, saying, “I – uhh… thank you? Or you’re welcome?”

Richie follows, addressing them both, “Ally, that’s bribery and I highly doubt it’s permissible under the edicts governing the swear jar. Eddie, you mean to tell me your mom will let you play with animatronic rodents, germ splattered video games, and pee soaked ball pits – but not your best friend?”

Eddie scoffs. “We’re not grade schoolers anymore, Rich. We don’t _play_ with each other.” Richie snorts. Eddie continues, “Just shut up. Besides, I haven’t been to Chuck E. Cheese in years, it’s not like I went last week and purposefully didn’t invite you.”

“Well, you purposefully didn’t invite me years ago, because I would have remembered you in a ball pit. I would have made it a Kodak moment. A Kaspbrak Kodak moment.”

“_I _didn’t purposefully not invite you, that was Bill’s mom’s choice. She thought you were a bad influence on… well, and I didn’t even want to go, but apparently he told Billy he really wanted me there. So…” Eddie’s voice has gone a little soft and Richie gets literally dizzy from the mental whiplash in tone change. He goes to sit on the living room sofa, mutes the TV where music videos are still playing. He catches a few disturbing glances of MC 900 Ft. Jesus’ freaky puppet video and decides to just turn the TV off entirely.

“It was George Denbrough’s 5th birthday. 5 is big. They call it _a milestone_, my dad says,” Alannah informs Richie. She’s sure that Eddie is avoiding saying George’s name, but she’s not sure if it’s for her benefit or for Richie’s.

Now they’re all sitting on the living room sofa, Alannah in the middle and Richie and Eddie flanking her on either side. It’s kind of a gut punch, because they’ve never really been faced with remembering George Denbrough in any way other than how his murder affected _Bill_ and Bill’s parents. But Alannah had been his classmate, and he was well liked among their peer group. Eddie was Bill’s oldest friend, thick as thieves before even Richie and Stan came along, so Eddie had known Georgie from near infancy.

Richie’d known George the least, but if Sharon Denbrough thought Richie was going to be a bad influence then Richie is deeply sad he never got to embody that role to its full potential. Richie really doesn’t want to dwell in this current mood, so he breaks the sad silence in typical Richie fashion. “Eddie, how did you get a million tickets at Chuck E. Cheese when you suck so miserably at arcade games?”

“I don’t suck! I just don’t have patience for the button smashers you like. Excuse me if I don’t want to waste the tiny amount of time I get away from my mother just to lock myself in a dark dirty room, wasting quarter after quarter, trying to nail the rhythm of Donkey Kong while every muscle in my body slowly atrophies.” Eddie punctuates his point by getting up to pace.

“I’ll have you know that every muscle in my forearms and my ‘button smashing’ hand are in peak physical condition,” Richie replies, using appropriate airquotes to display their resilience.

“Oh believe me, I have no doubt that the only muscles you’re exercising are all in your right arm, but I don’t think you need video games for that.” Eddie begins a classic ‘jerk off’ movement to illustrate the meaning of his dig, but halts it almost immediately when remembering there’s a small child in their midst - so basically it’s just more muppety arm flapping.

Eddie’s aborted arm movement and unsure delivery are still enough to convey the meaning to Richie. His eyes widen in surprise, delight, anger, confusion. “Et tu, Eddie Kaspbrak. How dare you. After all these years under my tutelage, you show the first signs that my student has become the master, and you fling it on me when I can’t even properly respond without traumatizing a child!”

Alannah is super confused so she helpfully veers them back on topic. “Eddie is really good at Skee-Ball.” To Richie it sounds like a non-sequitur. To Eddie it’s a welcome lifesaver, something to pull the conversation out of rocky waters. He’s grateful that Richie is sufficiently confused to stay silent long enough for Alannah to continue unimpeded. “George’s brother got tired of losing at everything so much and gave all his tokens to Eddie because Eddie was so good at Skee-Ball. He gave all of his tickets to all of the kids who were still there. Some kids always leave early because they’re scared of the animaltronics.”

Richie vaguely in the back of his mind remembers Eddie kind of liking Skee-Ball, maybe even being surprisingly good at it, but nowhere in his recollection does he remember Eddie the Skee-Ball Wizard. Even more than the sheer surprise of it, he’s hyperfocused on all of the hilarious _ball palming_ and _supple wrist flick_ jokes he can’t make in present company. A blessing in disguise, maybe, so he decides to skip questioning Eddie on his secret prowess and instead laud him on his generosity. “Gee, Eds, it’s awful swell of you to bestow your hard earned tickets on a bunch of tykes like that.”

Eddie shrugs. He doesn’t think Richie’s syrupy sarcasm is egregious enough to take umbrage over, so mostly he’s just relieved to come off that topic without getting further embarrassed. Or, at least, he thought he had – until Alannah says, “George made him get something, though. He said it wasn’t fair if he didn’t. So Eddie got a ring. It was really small so he had to wear it on his pinky.”

Eddie groans as Richie’s face brightens at this news. “How do you even remember that?” Eddie asks. Alannah doesn’t answer the question, because it seems so obvious to her that big birthday parties were huge life events that merit detailed recall. Richie does answer the question, because it doesn’t occur to him that it wasn’t directed his way. “How could I forget the pinky ring, Eds?” he practically shouts. “You wore it every day for like 6 months! How many times did I strip it off your finger to propose to your mom with it?”

Eddie groans again, but then quickly sits up ramrod straight in panicked realization. “My mom. She’s going to be at Ben’s to pick me up at 9 o’clock. What time is it?!”

“Wow, Eds, how’d you swing such a generous curfew time?” Richie asks. It manages to sound both sarcastic and genuine at the same time. He says this at the same time as Alannah is saying, “It’s 7:22, Eds.” Richie notices that she’s reading it off the digital display of her bright yellow She-Ra wrist watch, of which he’s now intensely jealous.

Part of Eddie relaxes when he hears the relatively early time, but the part of him that wants to scream “stop calling me Eds, you fucking fucks!” stays tensed. Instead he says, “See what you’ve done, Richie? You’ve made her think it’s okay to call me Eds. I’ll let it go because you didn’t know, but please just call me Eddie.” He’s honestly never felt so stupid to be angry about Richie’s nicknames as he does at this very moment, belaboring it to a small child and using a measured tone of voice that’s somehow both obsequious and pedantic. It makes him feel remarkably self-conscious, slumped and bracketing the v of his arms between knees squeezed shut but shaking. He certainly didn’t come here to examine any of his own issues, and now he’s being confronted with how ludicrously out of proportion his rage on this topic is, especially when…

“I like it,” Alannah says. “He calls me Ally and I like it because it’s like a secret identity and I can pretend to be someone else.”

Eddie sighs and sags backwards in his seat. His arms flop awkwardly around, not knowing what to do with them after he pointedly forces them out of angling dramatically across his brow. For some reason this whole conversation is making his head tingle like pins and needles. He’s freaked out by how eerily familiar her phrasing was – like she’d plucked it out of his own tingling pins and needles head – and is way too tired to belabor it anymore. Not right now, anyway. Maybe never. (Not never.) He decides to steer the conversation, “If I were you I would watch that watch around Richie. He’s eying it like it’s the last slice of pizza.”

Richie gasps in faux outrage. “I can’t believe the guy that still has my Walkman after six months is trying to tag me as a thief.”

Eddie narrows his eyes at Richie. “You want that back?”

Richie shrugs. He doesn’t want to be a dick and say ‘yes’ but he also doesn’t want to cop to the fact that it was _always_ kind of meant to be a gift because it’s kind of an extravagant gift and those always have some sort of _implications_.

Eddie is taken aback because he always thought it was meant to be a gift, at least sub-consciously. “I’m surprised you’re so eager for it,” Eddie says, and then looks momentarily panicked. At first he’s expecting Richie to hit him with a truly odious ‘your mother was eager for it last night’ joke, but when none is forthcoming Eddie starts to feel remarkably empowered. He realizes that with Alannah there that Richie is metaphorically cut off at the knees, powerless against inadvertent innuendo, a scenario Eddie has waited almost half his life for. Eddie continues, “You said you hated the Sports model because you felt like it was judging you for not being athletic. You also said it reminded you of Bumblebee, who you called ‘the worst Transformer’ just to piss me off because you _know _he’s my favorite.” Eddie is specifically training his voice to sound more irritated than hurt, but he doesn’t expect that wound about Bumblebee to still feel so fresh, so he also makes a more poignant admission, “You said I could have it for as long as I needed it.”

Richie doesn’t know any of the right things to say, of course. He’s also stymied by not being able to say the absolute _worst_ things, his usual go-to. This leaves him struggling to walk that middle line that he’s never had the mental balance for. Imagine saying _just the thing _– something _acceptable_, neither endearing nor enraging.

Instead of a response from Richie, Alannah reinserts herself into the conversation they’ve been having literally over her head. “I can’t believe you said Bumblebee is the worst Transformer.” She sounds truly betrayed. Gutted, even.

“I was just joking to wind up Eddie. What kind of monster do you think I am? Of course I love Bumblebee!” Richie is suddenly so glad to have her there as a distraction. “I’m so glad to have you here as a mediator, Ally.”

Eddie huffs his annoyance. “If you want your stupid Bumblebee back it’s at Ben’s. Feel free to go get it.” Eddie’s brow wrinkles with realization, “Actually, it might be at Mike’s.”

“You_ really _sound like you need it, what with the not knowing where it is.” Richie knows how petty he sounds, but there’s a silver lining - the more he lets his mouth bury him the less he feels like the in-a-fog version of himself.

“I don’t know where it is precisely _because_ I need it, Richie. It’s one of several things I have to shift from location to location so my mom doesn’t find it and I don’t lose it forever,” Eddie shares, testy but honest.

“Oh,” Richie replies. He thinks maybe in-a-fog Richie is back, but probably every Richie would have had the same non-reaction. All this earnest talk between teenage boys, it’s shaping up to be the _theme_ of Richie’s summer. But if he’s grown accustomed to it from recent chats with Bill and Stan that’s still done _nothing_ to stop the awkward feeling it gives him _now_, here with Eddie. With _Eddie_ it feels like his gut is folding in on itself in double. 

“I don’t want to be a mediator,” Alannah says, startling both boys. “Before my mom left tonight she said, ‘It’s either this or a mediator’ and it sounded like a mediator is bad news.”

It’s like a switch goes off and they both remember that Alannah’s not just there as a distraction for their tension or a deterrent against obscenity - or even just as the generalized irritant that all children are. She’s not set-dressing - she’s the star of the show. (Unlike the ‘Baby-Sitter’s Club’ show that Richie did _not_ tape off a free weekend of HBO, even if he had secretly wanted to.) To refocus his energies on the young child in his charge Richie decides the strange feeling in his stomach has got to be hunger and springs towards the kitchen with, “dessert time!” as his explanation.

“Did she even have dinner?” Eddie asks, his tone pitched to a default of judgment, and follows closely at his heels.

Alannah finds their dynamic slightly entertaining, but decides she’d rather capitalize on being left unattended and flips the TV back on to find more salacious programming for her Barbies to reenact.

“The Nells fed her before they left,” Richie says, peering into the refrigerator, surveying the options. Actually, he knows all the options and knows exactly what they’ll be having, but Eddie is closely peering over his shoulder and for some reason that roots him into a nervous holding pattern.

“Sugar makes kids crazy. Are you sure it’s a good idea to fill her with uppers when you’re all blitzed on downers?” Eddie says, all his advice still couched in the ludicrous paranoia of an old wives cautionary tale.

Richie grabs the Sara Lee strawberry cheesecake off the shelf and swivels suddenly, knocking Eddie a little off balance as he shoulders past him to the counter. He tries to give Eddie a withering glare, but he’s not naturally adept at those (like Stan or Bev are) so he really just looks like he’s squinting into the sun. His stomach folds again at the eye contact, causing him to bluster onward with, “Can it with the hysteria, pixy stick. There’s not even enough sugar in _your mom’s_ kitchen to make a single kid as sweet ‘n’ high-strung as _you_.” Richie is opening the cheesecake, unfolding the inverted eaves of tin that protect the flat white roof of cardboard covering the confection. He’s forcing himself to maintain eye contact with Eddie, who’s doing his level best at his own withering glare. It’s more effective than Richie’s, in that it at least communicates distaste, but entirely lacks the necessary dry subtlety – it’s more like the hangdog rage of a geriatric military vet or retired teacher who just wants you off his damn lawn already.

Eddie is in the middle of blustering through a response when Richie lets out a sudden shout of, “Ow, FUUHH-dge.” Somehow in the process of opening of the dessert he manages to slice his thumb on a tiny sharp mangle of tin.

Richie is holding his hand out in wonderment as blood starts to bead atop the shallow cut, and Eddie has just had enough. “What in the everloving fuck, Richie? What is _wrong_ with you.” Eddie doesn’t even know if he’s more enraged at Richie being an asshole, Richie managing to injure himself performing such an innocuous task, or the revelation that Richie _is_ that capable of controlling the offensive shit that comes out of his mouth and _still _never chooses to do so when it might benefit Eddie himself. 

Eddie grabs him by the shoulders, trying to move him to the bathroom, but Richie is still kind of freaked out by the bathroom and is trying to move himself instead to the kitchen sink. For a long five seconds neither of them can figure out why they’re rooted in the same spot, incapable of moving toward a more productive destination.

Eddie almost gags when he sees a drop of blood hit the countertop, which gives him the strength to overpower Richie’s will and work towards the bathroom. But then Alannah is standing in the entryway, blocking his path, gawking at them both in a curious way that manages to be both concerned and placid. Eddie and Richie almost barrel into her from the momentum, but Richie course corrects in time and drags himself and his newly grown Eddie barnacle over to the kitchen sink to start rinsing the wound.

“Should have gone into the bathroom,” Eddie huffs out, reasserting his will by guiding Richie’s wrist through the stream of water. “People eat off of things that are placed in this sink.” The water is running clean, it was barely more than a papercut, but Eddie is still holding Richie’s hand captive under water. He almost grabs the bottle of Dawn to clean off Richie’s hand like an oil-slicked baby duck, but decides that would be weird and turns off the water instead.

“It’s too bright in there,” Richie says, right as Eddie is handing him a stark white paper towel that flashes in the corner of his eye like a mini-portrait of ‘too bright’, punctuating his uncharacteristically terse statement with the exact right kind of unease. 

“Like a hospital,” Alannah adds. “When I got my tonsils out I had to stay overnight. Even with the lights low, with my eyes closed, it was too bright. It’s why I’m not scared of the dark anymore.”

Eddie shivers a bit, convinces himself it’s because his hands are still damp, and slips by Alannah to the bathroom while Richie’s attention is still focused on her. The bathroom feels normal to him, but he wouldn’t want to close his eyes in there – knows he’d feel that hospital feeling, brilliance shining through eyelids like the headlamp on a train that never _hits_ but never stops coming at you. He washes his hands without blinking, without looking in the mirror, dries them on a white towel, grabs a band-aid from the medicine cabinet (without even snooping on the medication bottles, a favorite shameful habit of his) and returns to the kitchen.

Richie’s still standing by the sink, giving Alannah his full attention while she regales him with all of the ice cream related perks of a tonsillectomy, and Eddie applies the band-aid to Richie’s thumb with a practiced lack of fanfare. It’s already done by the time Richie thinks to look down and survey the treatment. He feels disappointed, like he missed some chance to revel in the _ritual_ of it.

Alannah surveys Eddie’s work as well and tuts her tongue disapprovingly. Eddie is, of course, aghast – no one has ever faulted his aptitude for bandaging before. How dare she. “What?” he says, somewhere in between a demand and a plea.

“Do you hate him or something?” she says. Richie has no idea where she’s going with this but still laughs.

“What?” Eddie repeats, somewhere in between plea and bewilderment.

“It’s just…you gave him a _boring _one. I have all sorts of good ones in there. Ponies, Muppets, neons. If one of my friends needed a band-aid it wouldn’t be baloney colored, is what I’m saying.” She says it very scrupulously. Richie laughs even harder, shooting mawkish looks between his bandaged thumb and Eddie.

Eddie sees her point. Actually, at that age, he would have been bitterly jealous of her band-aids. His mother never bought the ones with characters, with colors, with personality. She’d said they cost too much, didn’t work as well, even that they lacked class. Pop culture stuff in general was always a hard sell with his mom – he’s pretty sure the only reason she bought him an Airwolf t-shirt is because she’s hot for Jan-Michael Vincent. He thinks about this a little too long and notices that both of them are looking at him expectantly. “I don’t hate Richie,” Eddie says, finally.

“That took you way too long, dude,” Richie replies.

“I’m not convinced,” Alannah concurs.

“If I hated Richie why would I be here?” Eddie entreats.

Richie wants to say, ‘why are you here?’ but is afraid of how it will sound so instead he says, “to kick me while I’m down, probably.”

Eddie just groans in abject disgruntlement and stares daggers at him.

“You look like you hate him and want to kill him,” Alannah observes. The sheer gravity of Eddie’s glares can be startling to an outsider’s perspective.

“I don’t _hate_ Richie, he’s just – terrible. You know? Don’t you have any friends like that? Infuriating and impossible people who make it seem like they exist solely to torment you?” Eddie begins, and sees that her face is telling him everything he needs to know - it’s an ‘of course not, that’s crazy’ kind of face. So he doesn’t let her say it, just continues on, “It’s like…when you have friends and they have friends and their friends are annoying but you’re all kind of hanging out together and you don’t know how it happened but suddenly the annoying friend is following you around the school field trip making animal sounds in your ear every 10 seconds – and you’re not even at the zoo! You’re at the museum house of some dusty old poet or puritan or something _boring_ and he’s like ‘wouldn’t it be cool if we were at the zoo instead of this boring crap?’ and of course you agree so you make the mistake of indulging him and commiserating about it and then little do you know you’ve opened yourself up to a whole day of his undivided attention, with monkey hooting and his arm flopping in your face like an elephant trunk.” He has to pause for a breath, or at least years of ‘asthma’ have taught him that he _should_ need to. “I’m sorry about the band-aids. The things they cover in cartoon characters to make them appealing to kids are usually subpar products. The superhero on your toothpaste is not going to fight the bacteria that cause gingivitis, right? Fluoride is.”

Figurative crickets. 

The whole confluence of topics – Richie being awful, Richie being his friend, cartoon character merchandise - makes Eddie think of something specific, something _funny_. His mind jumps to it like it’s a natural conclusion, but to his audience it comes out as a non-sequitur. “It’s like those Valentine’s Day cards for classrooms. If you give out one you have to give them out to everybody, and if you don’t give them out _at all_ everybody thinks you’re weird or poor. My mom actually let me pick those out for myself, and I guess that’s where I got the cartoon character stuff out of my system, because I would take ages picking them out. One year I got these Looney Tunes ones, and the main reason was the Daffy Duck one. It said, ‘you’re despicable - but I like you anyway’ on it. It made me think, well, _that’s _the one for Richie. So I bought them, even though they weren’t the _it_ thing. You know, uh, the popular thing. Looney Tunes is kind of old timey and lame. But I had to get those ones, because Richie needed to know he’s despicable - and I guess _that’s_ when I realized we were actually friends.”

This all has the effect of a complete illuminative explanation for Alannah, and for Richie – not so much. Richie’s stomach starts folding itself again at “that’s the one for Richie” and by the time Eddie finishes speaking Richie’s stomach is just a series of accordion pleats, compressing in and expanding out like the world’s saddest polka.

“Well,” Richie says, bellows in. “Cheesecake anyone?” Bellows out.

Eddie is spared any lingering embarrassment from his lengthy and revealing diatribe by the sudden horror at eating anything from the carnivorous pie pan. “I’m pretty sure that’s contaminated and needs to be thrown in the trash.”

“So, in my mouth then? My mouth is the trash,” Richie says, assessing the dessert to see if there might be any damage. It’s still sealed and the only blood he can see is the one dot that dropped about four inches away from it.

Alannah comes over to peer at the cheesecake and make her own assessment. She nods an affirmative, feeling fairly confident that the blood has not come into any contact with the food itself. Before either of the boys really notices her industriousness she has already pried off the top with a butter knife and served the three of them each a 6th of the wheel on (unsurprisingly cartoon covered) paper plates left over from her last birthday party. 

“I’m not eating this,” Eddie says, like he can’t believe he’s even still holding it.

Richie kind of wishes he also had a believable reason to object, because both the plate (Clifford the Big Red Dog) and the dessert are a red and white horror show in front of his face. He eats it all in three bites so he doesn’t have to think about it too much. By the time he’s finished he notices that Eddie actually _is_ eating it, because as strong as his convictions (neuroses) are they aren’t always strong enough to supersede his desires.

“Thanks for takin’ care of us, Al. You’re my favorite babysitter,” Richie says sweetly. He doesn’t feel too bad joking about his own ineptitude because he’s at least doing it while cleaning up. Rinsing forks, wiping up the droplet of blood, tossing paper plates, (carefully) putting the Sara Lee away.

“_Al_?” she replies testily, seemingly doing an about face on nicknames.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m trying a thing. It can be like the song?” Not really, Richie just likes short clipped nicknames for short clipped people.

“No. You cannot call me Al,” she says, resolute. Eddie is ecstatic, shouts, “See! Now you see what I mean.”

Alannah switching alliances on him is just not going to do. “I’m pretty sure it’s your bedtime, Alannah,” Richie proclaims. 

“It’s only 7:45!” she says, pointing at the stove clock (which actually reads 7:47, but you can’t blame a girl for rounding down.)

“Exactly enough time to clean up all the toys littering the living room before it’s time to turn down at 8,” Richie reasons.

Instead of getting angry at Richie for his sudden disciplinary bent she instead rounds on Eddie, shooting him a thunderous look before saying, “You’re a bad influence on him.” She flounces off to the living room before he has a chance to react (incredulously) to the accusation.

Richie is almost ready to crumple again, amazed at how entirely out of hand this whole evening has gotten, but then he hears Eddie laughing at him and suddenly he feels pretty okay about it all. People make such a distinction between ‘laughing at’ and ‘laughing with’ and the importance therein, but for Richie it’s just a tenuous distinction between the two – and a near non-existent one where Eddie is concerned.

“Your mockery just energizes and emboldens me, Eds my dear,” Richie says, leaning into the _good_ feeling that’s slowly growing.

“My mockery eviscerates you, Trashmouth,” Eddie counters, but he’s smiling. It’s the first time they’ve both been smiling at the same time all night, except for the brief moment they shared whilst making fun of Stan and his holy tome of avian obsession.

“Real rich calling _me_ Trashmouth after you racked up a swear jar bill of like 47 dollars, you miscreant.” Richie is leaning against the counter.

“Real rich of _you_, Rich, being such a hypocrite.” Eddie is leaning against the sink.

“Eds, if I can manage to dam this beautiful whitewater rapid then you should be able to throw a few twigs and stones in front of your babbling brook.” They’re facing off catty-corner.

“Jesus H. Christ, if I’d known we’d be doing poetry readings I would have just had Ben come instead.” Eddie is idly tugging on his overlong sleeves.

“That sounds great actually. Here, I wrote a haiku for you - IT’S EDDIE KASPBRAK, RUINING EVERYTHING, AS PER USUAL.” Richie’s hand cuts through the air as if he’s outlining the words with a flourish.

Eddie pauses, his eyes traveling the face journey of universal mental computation, says, “Damn, I think that actually was a haiku.”

“Darn tootin’. I spent haiku day in English translating all my favorite dirty limericks into 5/7/5, now it’s nigh but second nature to me.” Richie grins.

“_This_ is the guy lecturing me on bad language. If it’s so easy for you to switch on and off why are you always getting in trouble with the teachers over it?” Eddie wonders.

“Why is it so hard for you to switch on and off when I know you don’t swear in front of your mother?” Richie reasons. “Just pretend your mother’s here - you know I am.” Insufferable eyebrow waggle. 

“The only thing I can imagine worse than this conversation is having it with my mother here, too.” Eddie shudders.

“You and me and Mrs. K? Awkward, right? I know, I know. It’s because of the smoldering chemistry between us.” Eyebrow wagging intensifies, until the movement sends his glasses perilously down the bridge of his nose. 

“What?” You can forgive Eddie if he loses the plot, a little bit. He’s momentarily distracted by the always pathetic display of Richie pushing up and resettling his ridiculous glasses. Maybe for a split second he interprets the ‘us’ in that sentence to mean the two people currently in this room in this conversation, but it doesn’t last long before his brain contextualizes it back into the predictable procession of ‘your mom’ jokes. “Oh. Between you and my mom. Har-de-har.” 

“Who else…” Richie begins to question, but before he can catch up Eddie breaks in say, “My brain is just trying to protect me from processing any more gross sex stuff about my mom.”

“Have some respect for the sensuality of womanhood, Eddie. You wouldn’t even be here without your mom’s gross sex stuff. Then we’d all be stranded in a dark and Eds-less hellscape devoid entirely of your - OH! DANG, no – you’re right! Here I was thinking ‘there’s no way he’s an immaculate conception, knowing as I do the carnal appetites of Mrs. K’ - but I was looking at it all wrong! Of course you’re not the fruit of her loins - you are _far_ too adorable a specimen. There’s really no other explanation than you being plucked straight from a cabbage patch. How else would you have gotten so _cute_?” Richie reaches out to pinch Eddie’s cheek, an indignity he occasionally allows, if only to avoid the ensuing chase that follows a denial. But there’s no way he’s letting that happen over tense reunion at a stranger’s house with an overfamiliar kid pinballing around in the background, Richie’s baloney colored band-aided hand threatening damp lobster claws in his general direction. No way, uh-uh.

Eddie slides down the length of the counter, from the sink in the middle to the spice rack on the end, dashes back into the living room, and almost careens headlong into Alannah. She is bedecked in ‘Chip ‘n’ Dale Rescue Rangers’ pajamas, and Eddie is honestly amazed that it’s taken him til this moment to spot the behavioral and sartorial similitude Richie Tozier shares with _that_ fucking chipmunk, which he’s on the verge of saying out loud when it finally hits him – why is_ any_ of this even happening? Why is a dopy teenaged boy babysitting a little girl? Who decided this is appropriate? Eddie knows that Richie’s not some bad touch reprobate, but how do her parents know that? He begins talking mid internal monologue, so it sounds like it’s coming out of thin air when he says, “and where do parents even go on a Tuesday night?” Alannah is gazing up at him confusedly, but before she can counter or answer his question she sees Richie reach around from his position of spectral looming and pinch Eddie on the cheek.

Eddie tries to elbow Richie in the ribs, but Richie’s body is basically curved over concave like a sailboat’s spinnaker, and Eddie can’t quite connect. To deflect his embarrassment Eddie decides his best bet is to ignore the cheek pinch and the failed retaliation and restart his line of questioning out loud, from the top. “What even is going on here, Rich? How did _you_ end up babysitting anyway? What could have _possibly _possessed her parents to allow this?”

Richie is torn between giving a quick version of the truth and responding flippantly with a stupid joke, so the middle-ground-land of somewhere-in-between-ish becomes his only solid option. Any time Richie gives in to vacillation things get _weird_, and now is no exception. “Something happened last summer that changed me,” Richie begins ominously. Eddie’s expressive face manages to communicate trepidation so surely that no other word could be interpreted from it. Richie continues, unabated, “The details of the deed are fuzzy, but I believe I’ve unwittingly taken up the mantle of de facto defender of Derry, my dear Eddie.” He may be shit at accents and impressions, but he has a way with a tongue twister that kind of dazzles Eddie and maybe just maybe supports his ambitions to work in the entertainment industry. Eddie’s naivety (coupled with dread and confusion about Last Summer) are enough to _almost_ hear profundity, even when hit with bullshit like Richie saying, “The town’s parents just mysteriously know, without knowing, that I’m kind their savior.” Okay, actually, the word ‘savior’ killed it. His credulity is shattered now. Eddie rolls his eyes, and is happy to allow Alannah to steal his reaction when she says, “You dorks are weird. I’m going to bed now.”

Richie is unfazed. “Good on you, kiddo. Sleep well, Allie-oop.”

“Better than _Al_,” she responds, waving as she enters the foyer to get to the staircase that leads up to her bedroom.

“So you’ll _al_-low it?” Richie counters, shouting to make sure she hears his expert puncrafting. He is satisfied by the loud exaggerated groan he hears before she decisively shuts her bedroom door.

A few beats of awkward silence now that they’re fully alone together. Eddie takes a look at his watch to make sure he even has time to get answers, and he does – but now he’s feeling less curious about the night’s circumstances and more anxious to fall back into less consequential repartee. Basically, he wants to_ socialize_ with Richie but has no idea how to initiate that without triggering either an argument or a serious conversation.

Eddie notices that Richie has sat down on the couch and is looking pensively at the television. Richie says, “Do you think our dynamic requires an audience?”

Eddie moves toward the couch but stops short, standing between Richie and the TV. He looks down at him and says, “What does that even mean? Our _dynamic_? We’re friends, asshole, not co-hosts on a talk show.”

“_Are _we still friends?” Richie asks. 

Eddie rolls his eyes, purses his lips, tenses his jaw – the whole nine – but he doesn’t say anything. He decides to sit down on the couch cushion immediately next to Richie. Consciously, he assumes he does this to avoid direct or even peripheral eye contact. It may be cowardly, but it’s an easily quantifiable cowardice that he’s comfortable with acknowledging. Subconsciously, it’s all that - and more. “Of course we are,” Eddie finally responds.

“I know,” Richie concedes. “It’s just weird when you go so long without seeing someone. It was weird when my sister moved back in. I didn’t even really know who she was anymore. But then she says _I’m _exactly the same, just twice as high. Vertically, that is, because if she thought I had the means of getting high there’s no way she wouldn’t be bumming off me.”

“Isn’t that what this is all about, though? You called up Ben after having some kind of bad trip?” Eddie asks, trying not to sound worried.

“Kind of,” Richie admits. “I didn’t really mean to. I just had all my wisdom teeth taken out and I got dry socket. It hurts like a bitch so Dr. Tozier gave me some of those hardcore painkillers that fuck your shit up and will make you hallucinate and junk.”

Eddie tuts and hmms, “Well, they’ll fuck your shit up anyway. Like, literally. Opioids are notorious for stopping you right up. Every time I had to take them last year I had to also drink like a bucket of prune juice.”

Richie gags. “I don’t know how you manage to shift so effortlessly from the world’s cutest boy to the world’s grossest grandma. How do you fight the urge to pinch _your own_ cheeks?” He punctuates this by accidentally on purpose kneeing and poking Eddie in the side of his thigh with knobby knees and monkey toed feet, shifting towards sitting criss-cross and diagonal on the couch so he can face Eddie’s tense profile.

“Fucking watch it,” Eddie says, gripping his knees to stay stable in his current tense position.

“That’s the entire idea, Eddie,” Richie says with satisfaction, leaning against the arm of the couch to openly regard his friend. “So when did they have you on the heavy stuff?”

Eddie finally starts shifting down the couch a bit to escape Richie’s toes as they try and worm their way under his thighs, moves faster once they start getting caught up in the hem of his shorts. He ends up on the far side of the couch and the distance is giving Eddie a full peripheral view of Richie, so he kicks off his shoes and decides to just mirror Richie’s position. Better to face a problem dead on than to see sneaking glimpses out of the corner of your eye, especially when sneaking foot attacks are a risk. When a threat can’t be ignored it’s best to go with complete vigilance.

“My arm. And the other stuff, when I was out sick,” Eddie says, evasive as ever.

“Are you ever going to tell me what happened? What’s the _other stuff_?” Richie asks, more direct than Eddie was expecting.

“I don’t know why it matters. Healthcare can be a very private thing, Richie. You don’t hear me prying for details on how you gave yourself dry socket, after all,” Eddie says, happy to turn things back around on Richie.

“Because you just assume I got it from smoking,” Richie replies, direct and blasé.

“Well duh,” says Eddie. Not that he’s entirely versed in dry socket and its causes, but he’s following Richie’s lead here. 

“Shows what you know, always ready to think the worst. It was totally wholesome, actually – unauthorized straw usage for a malted milkshake, like out of those decrepit Archie comics we used to read in the room above your garage.” Richie actually feels bad for bringing that up, really. All those old timey comics had belonged to Frank Kaspbrak, and almost as soon as Eddie had started sharing them with his friends then Sonia decided it was time to toss them out, supposedly for fear of black mold. Richie hopes that it won’t make Eddie dwell, seeing as Archie was never a particular favorite of his – he’d deemed it ‘too hormonal’ – but damned if he couldn’t read vintage Little Lulus for hours.

“So you’re saying it’s from sucking too hard,” Eddie begins, and barrels on before Richie can come up with a retort that turns the subject around on _him_. “Speaking of the dangers of junk food, Ben told me that you tried to bribe him with Twinkies into telling you why I missed all that school. Real fucking nice,” Eddie says, betraying no emotions one way or the other about old comic books.

“Yeah, well, he told me that you told Mrs. K that he has quote ‘thyroid problems - _just like her_,’ to get sympathy when trying to sell him as the one mommy-approved friend. Doesn’t sound like you have much respect for the sanctity of healthcare to me,” Richie counters.

“Well, maybe that’s because it’s bullshit and neither of them have thyroid problems! You know she actually had the nerve to tell me that she was afraid his diet would be a bad influence on me? I had to sell her that thyroid crap to keep hanging out with him, even though you’ve seen the garbage my mom stocks in our cupboards. She’s completely delusional.” Eddie is fuming. Richie raises his entire brow in surprise to the self-assured vehemence on display, and Eddie reacts by saying, “I don’t know what you’re looking so surprised over. I told all of you that she was lying to me about my medicine my whole life.” Eddie chews miserably on his bottom lip, but tries to hold eye contact so he doesn’t look too much like a baby.

“I guess I expected you to be back under her spell, or something. If you _know_ all of her bullshit is bullshit then why are like you ten times more obedient to it now?!” Richie whisper shouts.

“Because! Because the more I know the more dangerous she is. Especially after last year, because I got_ actually_ sick for the first damn time in my life and it’s like it confirmed all of her biggest fears,” Eddie whisper shouts back, a little more whisper and a little less shout.

“Just tell me what happened!” Richie is so frustrated that he begins pulling at his own hair.

“I can’t, Richie. You’re gonna laugh at me. Hell,_ I’d_ laugh at me,” Eddie says, firmly.

Richie is dumbfounded by this. “Laugh at you? Why would I laugh at you getting sick?”

“Have you _met _you? It’s what you live for - the jokes, _the chucks_ \- and _I’m _your biggest joke of all.” Eddie pauses to swallow down some rage, but doesn’t let Richie respond. “Even right now you’re probably thinking ‘when have you ever been the biggest anything? Ha ha ha,’ because it’s not like you can let a day go by without reminding me that I’m _small_.”

Richie’s not quite sure what to say because he knows that Eddie is kind of right, but still feels strongly that whatever it is Eddie went through wasn’t funny or something he’d make into a joke. (At least until some time had passed, and Eddie seemed ready to joke about it with him, of course. Or at least until some time had passed, Eddie’s readiness be damned.)

Richie’s been experimenting with self-deprecating humor, so he tries a new tack. “_Everyone_ seems small to me now, Eddie. Check it out,” he extends his legs across the couch until they’re jamming up against Eddie’s criss-crossed knees. “I’m like 80 percent leg now, a real freak show.” He picks up the remote and starts tossing it hand to hand, smashing buttons, redirecting his nervous energy to it.

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees. “So get your nasty freak feet off me.” He punctuates this by balling his sleeves up in his palms and pushing at the offending appendages with blunt cloth covered stumps.

Normally this is where Richie would push. Keep coming at Eddie with creative dodges, making sure he encroaches on more and more bodyparts. Instead he just smiles enigmatically and withdraws, drawing his legs up halfway towards his chest. Consciously, Richie excuses his easy retreat by chocking it up to fatigue. Subconsciously, he’s starting to strategize ways to avoid pushing every single one of Eddie’s buttons. Almost like being nicer to Eddie would produce more satisfying outcomes, outcomes like quality time and honesty and building a foundation that will allow many more opportunities to pester Eddie ad nauseam. “Ok,” he says, giving word to his concession.

This is not what Eddie expects at all, so of course he responds with suspicion. “I don’t know what you’re playing at but don’t think it’s gonna fool me for a second.”

Richie shrugs like he’s completely unaffected by Eddie’s incredulity and by his body’s continued urge to poke and prod and his mind’s desperation to pry, but the nervous fidgeting of his hands on the TV remote is belying his aim of casual insouciance.

Richie’s silence and glassy gaze is making Eddie a whole new kind of anxious, so he turns his eyes instead to the television looming dormant like a boxy monolith, upon which he remarks, “Geez. That’s a big goddamn TV.”

“Do you want to watch?” Richie asks, excitedly latching onto a new subject.

Eddie nods, and holds his hands out for Richie to hand him the remote. He does have a better angle on the receiver, after all. But instead of turning it on he just sets it on the side table next to his arm of the couch. “I don’t give a damn about the TV. You were just driving me bugshit with that remote.”

Richie groans into his now empty palms. “You gotta give me something here, Eds. No talking, no horseplay, no TV, where am I going to redirect my energy?

“I’m fine talking, you just don’t know how to have a conversation,” Eddie replies, tersely.

“Mr. Swenson says conversation isn’t about etiquette, it’s about communication. So, meet me at my level, Eds. _Communicate_ with me.” So it’s a little New Agey sounding, maybe that’s an inevitability when coming off of a bad trip.

“Guess I missed that, being in the dumbshit classes and all,” Eddie says, bitterly. He continues on, language choices informed by the tutelage of the daytime talk shows he’s forced to watch on sick days alone with his mother. “You know, communication is a two way street, Richie. You like to talk a lot but you don’t want to actually tell me anything, either. You want me to tell you a bunch of personal stuff, but you don’t wanna tell me anything about what’s going on with you. Like why you’re babysitting a little girl on a Tuesday night when you should be at home healing your mangled gums.” 

“It’s not really that interesting. Nothing really is anymore.” Richie punctuates the mopiness of the statement by listlessly draping one arm over the edge of the couch.

“You sound like one of those whiny doom and gloom bands Bev put on her mixtape for me.” Eddie pauses while he tries to find a way to tell Richie that performative depression really doesn’t suit him, but he’s lacking both the words and the conviction to sell such an oblique diss. He gets distracted enough mulling it over that he doesn’t realize he’s said something he really shouldn’t have.

“Mix tape. From Bev. You. Mixtape from Bev. You have a mixtape from Bev.” Richie is incredulous. “I don’t have a mixtape from Bev. Does everyone else have a mixtape from Bev? Like, I knew I was _occasionally_ a dick to her, but would she sink so low as to give everyone else mixtapes knowing how much I love mixtapes?”

Eddie nervously rambles, “I don’t. I mean, forget I mentioned it. It’s not… like, just don’t tell Bill. He’d be devastated and he’s not supposed to know. Well, not him or Ben, but Ben found it one of the days I had the Walkman over at his place and the tape was in it because I don’t really have any other tapes, and so he opened it up to see what was in there and I guess he recognized her handwriting on the label or something, from those letters she’s sent from Portland, and he acted like he was cool with it but he made that face where he’s only smiling because he doesn’t want you to feel bad for making him feel bad.” Richie’s not immediately clear on which face that is, because Ben’s ‘I don’t want you to feel bad for making me feel bad’ face is essentially his default expression when dealing with Richie.

“Why?” Richie asks, dumbfounded.

“Well, you know. Because they like her,” Eddie explains.

“No, I know why Ben and Bill would be bitter about some guy other than_ them_ getting a mixtape from their dream girl. I mean why did you, of all of us, rate a Beverly Marsh mixtape?” Richie demands.

“Real fucking nice, Richie. So, what, it’s sooo crazy to think…” and Eddie trails off, because he doesn’t really know how to finish the thought. He could say, ‘to think a girl might like me…’ but it’s not about _a girl_, it’s about _Beverly_. He could say specifically, ‘that Beverly likes me…’ but he knows that’s patently absurd for so many reasons. There’s nothing he really can say because the generalities don’t hold up to scrutiny and the truth is so endemic to the setting it sprung from. That setting being a hospital in Portland, the backdrop of the story Eddie doesn’t want to share.

“Yeah, it’s fucking batshit crazy.” Richie’s tone is adamant, despite not having a full statement to respond to.

“Glad to see you’re back to talking like yourself, at least. Never thought I’d see the day that Richie ‘Trashmouth’ Tozier would be bound to a swear jar.” Eddie’s tone is sarcastic but once he says the words he’s surprised to note that they’re all true.

“Don’t try and sideline me with your obscenity fetish, Eddie. You gotta put me out of my misery on this one. How – why – what – when – where…” Richie is determined.

“What, are you jealous or something?” Because _all_ of his friends have to be in love with Bev, right?

“Why, because you’ll let cool Beverly tell you what cool songs to listen to, but wouldn’t even borrow a single tape from me?” Richie is maybe not over the time that Eddie said he hated ‘Rock the Casbah’. Eddie is definitely not over being grabbed and violently shaken by Richie every time it came on the radio, a ritual made even less charming when underscored with Richie atonally shouting “rock the Kaspbrak!” right in his goddamned face. 

“No.” Eddie’s confused now. “That’s not what I meant…” Eddie is so frustrated by this conversation that he’s already reaching his breaking point, wanting it to just be over with already. He knew Richie would break him if given enough time to worm his way in. Thus, almost a year of hangouts kept strictly under 15 minutes. So Eddie decides it might as well be _now_, because around the 20 minute mark he knew he couldn’t go another year like the last. “Ok. I’m going to tell you.” He means _everything_. 

So this, of course, is when Richie’s sister and her burnout boyfriend decide to walk in the front door.

Richie groans the most guttural groan of his short life, switches from draping his arm off the edge of the couch to plastering it over his eyes, which he immediately regrets – because, glasses. Eddie gasps in surprise at the interruption, flips himself back to a forward facing and rigid position.

“I thought you were out on the town, partying it up,” Richie grouses as they walk into the living room.

“It’s Tuesday. There’s not actually anything to do.” She punctuates this by hoisting a Blockbuster bag for emphasis. Tre parrots her movement by hoisting a six pack of Black Label.

When Richie uncovers his eyes and sits up properly he notices Eddie staring judgmentally at Tre and feels a rush of affection, pleased that Eddie’s joining him in the solidarity of thinking this guy is a douchebag.

“Don’t be rude,” Peggy admonishes. Eddie schools his features, thinking she means him, until she continues by saying, “Introduce your friend, Rich.”

“Eds, this is my hellbeast sister Peggitha. Pegs, this is mon petit prince Édouard - from Québec. He only speaks French, so feel free to not talk to him at all ever.”

Peggy’s eyeroll is barely ambitious enough to count. She waves a hello to Eddie. Tre, returning from his trip to the kitchen to refrigerate the beers, earnestly offers him a “bonjour” because he seems to have actually believed Richie’s bullshit.

“My name is Eddie. Just Eddie. And I was just leaving,” he moves to stand from the couch but finds himself temporarily pinned by Richie’s feet, thrown over his lap lightning fast and locking him in like the bar on a carnival ride.

“I’d say don’t leave on account of us, but I can’t imagine wanting to stick around if _this_ is what you’ve got to look forward to,” Peggy says, gesturing to Eddie’s deadlocked lap.

Richie begins, excitedly, “You can’t leave me on a cliffhanger like that, Eds. You were just about to tell me about the Beverly Marsh mixtape. I need to know the full track listing and the order they’re played in. Is there a hand drawn insert telling you all the song titles? Are there notes explaining the choices? Is there a theme?” He’s splitting his concentration between asking all the cogent questions and keeping his feet clamped to the far armrest of the couch, so it’s fairly effortless for Eddie to worm his way out of the hold.

“Your chick made you a mixtape? That’s dope, little dude. Last one I made for Peg was when she was still away at college. Hit her with some Chicago, some Kansas, a little America, and bam! – a trip overseas to Asia. Like I was saying ‘it’s a big world, babe – but love knows no borders’, right?” Tre chimes in, as if anyone asked at all. “Working at the record store gets me access to all the good tunes. Especially after we installed those listening kiosks with the headphones, we get twice as many demo discs as we used to. Now, if you want to hit her back, my best advice is _don’t_ leave out the GNR – chicks love GNR.”

Eddie just nods dumbly, wishing he could still convincingly pretend he doesn’t speak English. He decides to keep it simple with an, “uh, thanks. Nice to meet you” as he heads to the door.

Richie jumps up to follow, saying, “Let me at least walk you to the door,” as he stumbles over his own feet and almost careens directly into Eddie, who turns around to place steadying hands on Richie’s bony shoulders. “Chill out, Richie. I’ve gotta be back at Ben’s no later than 8:50. You can listen to the tape when I bring you back your Walkman. You know it’s the only thing I have to put in there anyway.”

Eddie is still under the impression that there’s a tacit agreement that the Walkman was given to him and is still _his_, but it feels like a good way to promise to see Richie again soon without sounding sappy. Richie totally ruins that by looking hurt and saying, “You don’t have to give it back. It was a gift.” This totally undermines Eddie’s goal of not being weird in front of the two twentysomething strangers who are cracking into their first beers and poorly pretending not to gawk at the two dramatic teenage boys. 

“I’ll see you soon,” Eddie squeaks out, and hurries out the front door. He probably makes it half a block before Richie recovers and woozily reclaims his spot on the couch.

“Dude,” says Tre. “You’re not drunk, are you?”

“No,” Richie says testily. “Your girlfriend conspired to give me dry socket, and now I have to take Norco to cope with existence or whatever.” A pause. “Never again.”

“Jealous, man. That’s good shit. If you decide you don’t want the rest of your RX I’ll happily take them off your hand. Sometimes you can get 2, 3 dollars a pop for those puppies.” There’s a bit of cognitive dissonance between Tre’s tone (sunny, casual) and the content (encouraging a teenager to deal drugs), but he’s happily oblivious to the incredulous stare both the Toziers are shooting him.

“That’s the last thing our family needs right now, my little brother getting busted for peddling pills to his little friends on the playground. Which, by the way, I guess I owe you an apology. You appear to have one friend who’s not Stanley,” Peggy says, with little trace of inflection, shuffling through a stack of VHS tapes. She decides to let Tre choose, seeing as her little brother being there meant there’d be no funny business on the Nells’ couch that night.

Tre chooses ‘C.H.U.D. II: Bud the C.H.U.D.’ and under normal circumstances a film of this caliber would engender the utmost (begrudging) respect in Richie, but there is something there in the title that feeds freshly into the confusing memories at the edge of his consciousness. The discomfort makes Richie want to grouse, but he can’t - it’s almost as if something has got his tongue.

Richie sleeps through the movie.


	3. Chapter 3

**WEDNESDAY**

Richie wakes up Wednesday morning without even remembering how he got home. While that comes with some unease, mostly he’s feels good – and filled with a renewed dedication to the childhood rituals of summer. He’s begun to learn that growing up sometimes necessitates making deliberate actions. When you’re little it’s enough to just be receptive, to show up and let friendship and adventure happen _at_ you. You get older and you have to be proactive.

He ruminates on this, makes plans while eating the scrambled eggs he was industrious enough to make for himself. It’s not that Richie’s ever been _lazy_, just that he’s rarely had to self-direct. He imagines himself as a wind-up toy that’s just aimlessly click clack chattering about until someone nudges it into the general vicinity of an acceptable course, and no matter how well he stays course he’ll always do it jerkily and bump against the barrier of his destination. He has too much ambition to be aimless, though. Recently he’s noticed that he’s been getting better reactions to the jokes he _works on_, crafts a little, before unleashing on his friends and family. Taping and listening to himself, the most mortifying exercise in self-flagellation conceivable, has definitely helped with his Voices. So if his friendships are analogous to his comedy then that just means he’ll have to put in the work there, as well. 

It’s with all this in mind that he resolves to go out and make some memories today. So he showers, gently brushes his teeth, puts on his most average of ugly outfits – and collapses back into bed.

His relative comfort upon waking had lulled him into a false sense of security and now he’s enfeebled by a flare up of both pain and self-doubt. The pain is clean and simple, coming from a known source, but the squirming sense of insecurity is what really lays him low. He knows it’s all down to seeing Eddie last night. It was the impetus for every positive feeling he’d had upon waking, and now it’s emblematic of every counter-argument to his man-of-action delusions of grandeur.

Maybe seeking out his friends isn’t him _growing up_, just him never learning when to _give up_. Maybe if he has to ask for attention it’s because he’s not worth the regard. Maybe he’s actually just not wanted. Most damningly, if you reverse engineer the analogy to his attempts at comedy then the entire premise falls apart. The hit of a joke that’s been labored on is a powerful feeling, but maybe it means that he’s not funny just being who he is, messy and off the cuff. If he’s really honest with himself the best laughs he gets are neither improv nor scripted, they’re_ reacting _to the absurdities that come from his mouth when he’s riffing with Eddie. Not comedy, but hysteria, and relevant only to the audience of one it bubbles up from.

It’s the liminal space between striving and yielding, planning and drifting, droll wit and dick jokes – that’s where he likes himself best, and the only way he knows how to access that space is through Eddie. So that’s how he finds his direction, a nudge to start his travel. Tomorrow, that is.

**THURSDAY**

Richie resets and tries again on Thursday. Maybe his first tactical error was in trying too hard to start the day out on the right foot. Cooking breakfast, showering, and introspection all before noon? That’s just overcompensating. Can’t expect a guy to do all that and keep the momentum going enough to actually follow through on anything.

The new goal is to walk the middle ground. Showering again so soon would be redundant, and Pop Tarts will fuel him better than nothing. Might as well put on the same outfit as yesterday, not like he did anything in it.

He’d tried to skip painkillers completely on Wednesday, considering all that happened Tuesday, but he’d caved sometime in the afternoon when all the distractions of self-imposed bedroom quarantine had lost their luster. Music, comic books, self-abuse, and ashamedly digging out your old Castle Grayskull playset are only palliative up to a point. Yesterday, being alone for most of it (bar a brief shared dinner of Kraft macaroni and cheese with his sister, scored by the last 10 minutes of a new ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ and the first 5 minutes of a rerun of ‘Night Court’), he hadn’t had to worry about the outside influence that made his forays into opioid use so untenable.

Today he’s resolved to Just Say No, so he chases his second Pop Tart with a more prosaic cocktail of Ibuprofen and Acetaminophen. Now, he feels okay, but his mind is preoccupied with fear of failing his resolve and taking the pills anyway. This preoccupation is what spurs him to his first destination of the day. He goes to his room, jams some stuff into a backpack, and takes off on his bike.

The record store is a little far, so to stave off any residual wooziness the heat and exercise may cause, he tries to pretend he’s riding Stan’s bike instead of his own. That helps keep him upright, imagining how thoroughly he’d be eviscerated if he crashed Stan’s bike, and when he stops himself outside the front of the store he even uses his kickstand after dismounting.

Richie has done more prank calling to this establishment than actual visiting, so he pauses for a moment at the entrance to get himself oriented. He breathes a sigh of relief that the music playing is definitely rock or rock adjacent, which means Tre’s the one on duty. If the owner were manning shop today it would be sounding a little more Top 40.

There’s no one manning the counter, but it doesn’t take long for Richie to find him in the back stock room eating fast food fries in front of a window air conditioner.

Tre startles and chokes a little bit when he sees Richie come in. “Jesus Christ, dude, you scared me. Hey, you’re not supposed to be back here.”

“Yeah, well, I bet you’re supposed to be at the counter, so we’re even,” Richie says, as he unzips his backpack and presents the contents to him.

“We don’t buy used stuff here,” he says, eyeing all the tapes (and a couple of his dad’s CDs) that Richie has unveiled.

“I know that. Remember the other night, you said I could come here and use the shop’s demo copies to fill out some mixes?” Richie sounds assured, despite the fact that he’s prompting what he knows to be a false memory.

“No, I don’t think so. No way I was drunk enough to agree to that, kid. You were pretty out of it, I could see where you may have misunderstood.” Tre is nominally kind about it, because it’s generally best to be nice to your girlfriend’s little brother, but he definitely has no intention of being talked into anything out of sheer dopy kindness alone.

“Ok, you drive a hard bargain. Let me do it and I’ll give you this,” Richie wastes no time beating around the bush and proffers the half-empty bottle of Hydrocodone that was also in the backpack.

“Yeah, okay.” Tre folds easily.

So they set to negotiating the minutiae. Tre takes a look at what Richie already has and brings him some more of what he calls “geek shit, some of it’s cool” to keep things cohesive. Richie is secretly impressed with the breadth of his musical knowledge, but maybe that’s innate to people who continue working at record stores well past the stage where one usually gets a grown up job.

Right as Richie is leaving, strapping on a few pounds of music Tre has very trustingly allowed him to leave with, he asks Richie, “So who’s all this for?”

“No one. Just me. Personal use. Variety is the spice of life, ya know,” Richie says breezily.

“No one goes through all this trouble for _personal use_.” Tre may be a little dumb but he has plenty of wisdom on the niche love language of the mixtape. When Richie takes too long to answer the obvious answer dawns on him, “Ohhhh nooo, man. It’s for your little friend’s girlfriend! The one who sent him a mix. That’s cold, dude. Especially cuz that one doesn’t look the ladykiller type, he’s gonna have a hard enough time keeping her on the hook without you elbowing your way in.”

Richie wants to pretend that Tre’s hit the nail on the head, doesn’t have a problem with letting people believe the worst of him when the truth is a more uneasy endeavor, but for some reason his resolve to play along dissolves as soon as the insult turns towards Eddie. So, he snaps. “Fuck off, dude. The ladies should be so lucky as to snag Eddie Kaspbrak.” Oh, oh no. That’s kind of gay, right? When it comes to ‘kind of gay’, Richie has found the only way out is through. “The only thing I’m going to be elbowing my way into is his heart, after I make him this sweet ass mixtape.” There, done, unequivocally gay – the only thing left to do is hope it sounds like a joke.

Richie doesn’t really get the chance to find out how it lands, because he’s out the store and on his bike and down the block before Tre has a chance to respond.

The panic hits while he’s bicycling back into the residential areas of town. He tries to convince himself that once Tre tells Peggy what he said about Eddie then Peggy will know it’s a joke (because it _is_, right?) and will consequently explain to Tre that it was a joke (because it’s gotta be) and then Tre will know not to tell anyone who might carve slurs about him onto the Kissing Bridge (a fate poor Eddie has already fallen to.)

What if _Eddie _thinks Richie giving him a mixtape is gay, though? Which is ridiculous, because Beverly giving Eddie one was certainly not seen as an admission of feelings. In fact, good thing he has one from Bev, already there and primed to dilute any suspicions. Still, maybe that’s not enough. If Eddie had _multiple_ mixtapes from _all_ his friends then Richie’s would certainly be less conspicuous. It’s not like Eddie doesn’t have a need. For more and better music, for reminders of his friends on days his mother won’t loosen her grip.

Richie ends up at Stan’s house because it’s where his subconscious mind navigates him to while his conscious mind is preoccupied with panic and scheming. Thankfully, Stan is there, and he’s the one to answer the door. He takes one look at Richie’s nervous face and bulging backpack and deadpans, “If you just robbed a bank the answer is no, you cannot lay low here.” He punctuates the statement by waving him in, and begins the trek up to his bedroom, not waiting to see if Richie follows. Upon entering, he sits down at his desk chair and faces his bed, anticipatory of Richie’s next move to plunk down and sprawl out on it. 

Richie gets right to the point, opens up his backpack to show Stan. A few jewel cases fall out, but land harmlessly on the carpeted floor before being stuffed back in.

“Oh shit, you actually did commit a robbery. Richie, what the hell?” Stan’s voice breaks on the last sentence.

Richie doesn’t know whether to feel proud or hurt that his friend actually believes he stole hundreds of dollars of tapes and CDs from the local record store. Either way, it’s more fun to act scandalized by the assumption. “I can’t believe you think I’d rob the music store! Not without first asking you what you wanted me to pick up for you.”

“Fear of a Black Planet, Public Enemy,” Stan responds, without hesitation. He’s barely listened to anything outside of rap and hip-hop since ‘Licensed to Ill’ hit, so Richie finds this in no way surprising. Well, if he’s surprised, it’s only because Stan doesn’t have the album yet, but Richie is also entirely ignorant of Professor Griff’s assertion that ‘the Jews are wicked, and we can prove this’, whereas Rabbi Uris certainly was _not_ and consequently had enacted a strict ban on Stan ever bumping Public Enemy again.

“I’ll add it to my next heist,” Richie says, magnanimously. “But seriously now, these are just demos from ‘Dingle Derry’s’ that my sister’s boyfriend lent me in exchange for half a bottle of painkillers, and it’s all to make a mixtape for Eddie. However, I also need you to make a mixtape for Eddie because if I’m the only one doing it then it’s going to look weird.” Might as well be fully honest with Stan, he always sniffs out the truth eventually.

Stan blinks. “Weird _how_?” he asks, though he fully knows the answer to that.

“Mixtapes are usually for your boyfriend or girlfriend,” Richie says, _knowing_ that Stan knows.

“I don’t see how me making one too will make that any better. Won’t it just look like we want to double team him?” Stan replies, droll as anything.

“Christ on a cracker, Stanley!” Richie is scandalized, truly. “And no. I’m gonna have everyone else do it too. It’ll be like a group project.”

“What’s the occasion, though? His birthday’s not til November. Without context it’s just going to be some big gesture you bestow upon him so he’ll hang out with you again. Or is it _make out_ with you? Because even I can’t tell if that’s your goal or not.”

“The context is that he was sick and we didn’t do anything to help him through it or whatever,” Richie says, a little too softly and a little too shifty.

“You know better than anyone that that was _his_ choice, not something _we_ did to punish him. And that was over six months ago!” Stan is more irritated than he would be if it weren’t coming up on his birthday very soon, and the one year anniversary of his disaster of a bar mitzvah - the one that _Eddie_ hadn’t come to. He’d understood at the time, the rift in the group and Eddie’s break still being so fresh, but Stan barely remembers the gravity of those things now because he does his best every single day to build up more mental barriers against the events of the entire summer. 

“You were sticking up for him on this just last week, and now it’s like you’re saying _I’m_ the sap for letting him off the hook,” Richie grouses.

“Richie, you’re_ always_ the sap. Last week you were the sap for being mad at him, this week you’re the sap for…whatever this is.” Stan is calming down again.

“Whatever it is is nothing,” Richie denies. “I just…want to. Can’t I just want to do something without over-examining it?”

“If you weren’t over-examining you wouldn’t have come up with this friends-as-a-buffer gambit,” Stan counters.

“It’s easier this way.”

“It’s literally not. Time, money, running around, begging…”

“Sometimes things have to be set up in a complicated way to be delivered with ease. Like a comedy routine. You write it down, you practice it, and then when you actually get up there and say it – that’s when. That’s when it pays off, because the stress is highest there with all that scrutiny. It’s only easy then because it was hard before.” Richie says all that and it’s a lot but the worst part is how he can’t diffuse it by riffing on his unfortunate use of both ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ in the last sentence.

Stan doesn’t respond. Instead, he reaches into the cassette tape organizer perched on the corner of his desk. Knowing his sorting system perfectly there’s no need to rifle through looking for the right thing, he just snatches it out of its slot and hands it to Richie. It says ‘SUMMER 1989 #1’ on the label, in perfect penmanship. Or as perfect as an almost-13-year-old boy holding a Sharpie can achieve. “Give him this. It’s the one we listened to at the quarry. I can’t listen to it anymore, anyway.”

Richie nods, not wanting anything he says to make Stan change his mind, but something occurs to him that needs saying. “Can you do a new label? I’m not sure he’d be able to listen to it either, with that title on it.”

Stan gets it. Of course he does, so he finds a fresh label sticker from a fresh blank tape and writes out a lazy ‘For Eddie’ on it, attaches it carefully after Richie finishes peeling off the old label. He encases it and passes it back to Richie.

Now with that done there’s nothing left for each of them to do but dwell on the elephant in the room. The completely ignored rhetorical-but-not-really question Stan posed about whether Richie wants to make out with Eddie. Stan _hopes_ that Richie took it as a joke, hopes nearly as badly as Richie had hoped the same about Tre earlier.

“Soooo…” Stan says.

“Yeah,” Richie accedes.

“Want to go see what Mike is up to?”

“God yes, I thought you’d never ask.”

“What do you think it is?”

“Helping a family of geese and goslings cross the street, probably.”

“Yeah? My bet’s on reading to old people.”

“Only one way to find out, right?”

As they bike to his house Richie and Stan continue rattling off various good deeds they’d be interrupting Mike from fulfilling. It’s a stale in-joke from the previous year, predicated on the facets of his personality that were immediately evident - kindness, fortitude, loyalty. The fraught circumstances around the building of their bond necessitated that he share his traumas before he share his favorite ice cream flavor, so while they were still learning the minutiae of his character they supplanted the unknowns with the things you’d imagine a Boy Scout getting a badge for. (Stan didn’t have to imagine, having been a Scout himself up until middle school. He’d used studying up for his Bar Mitzvah as an excuse to quit, because - fuck poison ivy.) This had all built up a tender mystique for Mike that each banal fact (favorite ice cream: lemon custard) served to dissolve, all for the better. But learning to _like_ someone that you already love is a tricky backwards dance for anyone to maneuver, let alone teenage boys.

“I can’t believe you’re just here reading a book. I thought you’d be writing letters to lonely penpals in hospice care or knitting sweaters for the homeless,” Richie says as he walks onto the back porch of Mike’s house, taking a seat beside him on the swing bench.

“I called it. Told you he’d be reading,” Stan points out.

“To old people, specifically. You see any old people around here, Stanley?” Richie tries to gesture widely, but the hand holding his backpack can’t support the load and he barely gets control back to set it down gently.

“No old people, but I do see a buffoon with the same eye glasses as my grandfather,” Stan says, leaning casually against the bannister. Richie flips him the bird, what with that being the exact thing he is sensitive about. But Richie is self-aware enough to know he can’t begrudge anyone from getting their digs in at him, so he gives a thumbs-up for equal measure.

“What’ve you got in your backpack that was heavy enough to almost snap your wrist in two?” Mike asks, staring ponderously at the bulky bag in front of their feet.

“Richie robbed the record store,” Stan deadpans.

Mike raises his brow and says, “Better not have. I can guarantee if anyone tracks him down to this property _I’m_ gonna be the one getting locked up for it.” It’s a serious statement but he doesn’t say it with any gravity, so Richie doesn’t think Mike_ really_ thinks he stole anything. That makes Richie feel a little warm and fuzzy, the Losers Club arbiter of morality having that kind of faith in him.

“Don’t listen to him, Mike. He’s trying to poison you against me so you won’t say yes to the favor I’m gonna ask, and you two can go off and nature watch or something,” Richie says.

“I’m all natured out.” Not entirely true, seeing as he’d chosen the porch over his room for a spot to read while he waited for his friends to arrive. (Stan had very politely phoned ahead.) Mike marks his spot before setting down his book and asks, “So what do you need?”

Richie explains the mixtape scheme, much less awkwardly than he had with Stan. Mike doesn’t seem to see anything strange in it, which leaves Richie feeling relieved. If there’s any Loser that would see acts of kindness through an innocuous lens it would be Mike. Even Ben, fellow sweetheart and relative newbie, would be preoccupied with the romanticism of it all.

“I don’t have anything to do it,” Mike says, apologetically. “Only music I own is my parents’ old records, and they’re not exactly compatible with my boom box.”

“My dad is slowly going through all his old vinyl and transferring it to tape so he can listen in the car. It’s kind of a drag, really – believe you me, The Doobie Brothers are not half as interesting as their name would make you think. Anyway, maybe we could do that with yours too? Sucks to have music you can’t even listen to,” Richie says, trying not to sound overeager but now desperately wanting to do this. Now not just for Eddie, but for Mike as well. Mike deserves access to that part of his parents’ memory, and Richie is stoked that there’s something nice he might be able to do for him. Something that doesn’t involve helping him blaze through his farm chores to free him up faster for hangouts. Bill and Ben are the only ones who are big enough saps to have done that more than once or twice.

Mike looks a little tortured as he thinks it over, but then a smile wins out. “Okay. But I’ve gotta be there to babysit them. Vinyl requires finesse.”

Richie scoffs, “Finesse is my middle name.”

“It’s Shannon, actually,” Stan volunteers.

“Stanley! That was supposed to go with you to the grave. So much for the bond of pinworm pals,” Richie complains.

Stan winces and Mike laugh-winces, telling them, “I don’t even want to know,” and excusing himself inside before Richie has a chance to explain and make it even worse. He returns a couple minutes later with a milk crate of old records. Once he gets back Richie and Stan are bickering about something else entirely and waiting for him by their bikes.

Mike pulls his bike around to join theirs, carefully sets the records in his basket (as careful as if they’re a broken-armed Eddie Kaspbrak), and warns them, “No riding like maniacs with these in here.” 

“What do we look like, Bill Denbrough? Every bump on the way here made my jaw feel like it was gonna explode, and Stan is – well, _Stan_. If anything you’ll have to avoid lapping us,” Richie says, with a wobbly kick-start.

It’s an uneventful ride to Richie’s place. Richie shouts out the story of his dental disaster to Mike while trying to keep a pace just fast enough to maintain forward momentum. Upon their arrival Richie directs everyone into the garage, to leave their bikes and the various and sundry music formats. Richie’s plan was originally to set the window AC to blast and take everyone into the kitchen to snack while it cooled down, but he’s surprised to be hit with a refreshing blast of air once he enters.

Because, of fucking course, his dad is already in there. Wentworth Tozier gives a surprised but polite greeting to the boys. Richie’s relieved to see he’s preoccupied more with noodling with his bass guitar than with the stereo system, not that it matters much either way – the man’s _got_ to go.

“Stan, if you would kindly chaperone Mike into the kitchen for refreshments while I have a conversation with dear old Dad,” Richie requests. Mike has been there before, has met Richie’s parents once or twice, but he’s not as comfortable there as Stan is.

Stan gives a casual “hey” and Mike gives a polite “Nice to see you, Mr. Tozier” while heading into the house from the connecting door.

As soon as the door clicks shut Richie says, “Dibs.”

“Seems to be I’m already in here, son. Dibs only applies when claimed beforehand, on equal ground, and does not have the power to supersede previous occupation,” Wentworth points out, astutely.

“Rock paper scissors?” Richie tries.

“Same logic applies. Plus, you’re at a distinct disadvantage because I know you always choose rock,” Went counters.

“Yeah, well, I maintain that rock would bust right through paper like the Kool-Aid man busts through a brick wall.” Richie is adamant.

“Oh yeah!” Wentworth’s Kool-Aid man is better than Richie’s (which he’s very bitter about.) 

Richie pushes his glasses up onto his head just so he can fully bury his face in his palms without smudging the lenses. How is he supposed to deal with his dad when he’s in a good mood and relating to him on his level? Is there anything worse?

Richie’s gotta pull out the big guns on this. He pitches his voice low, because the kitchen is just off the garage and he doesn’t want to be overheard, and points to Mike’s milk crate. “Those belong to Mike’s dead parents,” Richie says, solemnly.

“Yeah?” Wentworth says, his face crumpling so Richie knows he’s already won. He sets down the bass and walks over to thumb through the records.

“Yeah. So I told him I could copy them for him,” Richie explains.

Wentworth sighs, he knows he’s been beaten. “Okay, but let me walk you through it because there’s some good stuff in here and I don’t want to be held responsible for you fucking this up.”

Richie really already knew the process, he’s good with electronics (especially music based), but he lets his dad show him anyway. It’s nice. Wentworth never asks how his extraction sites are doing, which is less nice, but okay.

Stan and Mike are sent out to the garage as Wentworth enters the house. They bring Richie a 7-Up and a peanut and butter jelly sandwich, which apparently his mom made while he was negotiating with his dad. It’s nice. She made it with strawberry jelly instead of grape, which is less nice, but okay.

His dad was right. There’s some good stuff in there. At one point his mom peaks in the garage at them to say, “ooh, I love this one” and dance in the doorway while Richie pretends to die of embarrassment, but is actually dying from the silent acknowledgment that he’s lucky to have the parents he has.

Richie and Mike set to the task, each of them periodically tapping out to compete against Stan on the dart board hanging across from the stereo set up. Whoever isn’t actively playing gets lost in the music, Will Hanlon’s collection of soul and rhythm and blues and Motown pop. They’d only survived the fire because they never made it out of his childhood bedroom.

All three boys imagine a version of themselves that existed in the era of those songs. What they’d be like, what would be the same or different, what would be better or worse. Richie is the only one with the privilege-fed ignorance to think his life would have been better – idyllic, even. 

Overall, it’s too big a project and requires too many blank tapes for them to finish, but Richie’s enthusiasm for the music and respect with handling the records instills Mike with enough faith to leave the rest in Richie’s hands. But not enough faith to think Richie could throw together the mix on his own, so before leaving for home (it’s late, his grandpa is going to be pissed) he’s sure to meticulously write down a track list.

“I know what stuff Eddie reacts to from the choir. This is mostly classics, stuff he’ll have heard in movies or commercials hawking golden oldies compilations. He’ll like it,” Mike says, hurriedly crossing his last T before leaving.

“Oh man I completely forgot to grill you about that,” Richie says as both his friends are leaving, very annoyed with himself.

Mike shrugs, tells him “it’s not that interesting, it’s church,” as him and Stan wave Richie off, riding off on their bikes.

“Of course it’s interesting,” Richie says, thinking out loud. “It’s Eddie.”

**The Second Friday  
**

Richie is one week out from his wisdom tooth removal and is feeling mostly better, mostly due to the energy he’s drawing from the mixtape project. If Richie were feeling even better he would have recorded some intros and interstitials for the tapes, really show off his deejaying skills - so his not feeling well really probably is a blessing in disguise.

So it’s with great reluctance that he agrees to the babysitting scheme again for Mr. and Mrs. Nell date night number two, but blank tapes don’t grow on trees so he figures he ought to take the cash while he can.

Turns out there’s not much cash in the offing, though. Turns out Tre is out of town with some buddies seeing a concert that Peggy is minus interested in, so she decides to stay for the gig and only throw Richie a 5 spot for the unnecessary assist. He considers just staying home, but it’s easy money and a chance to show Alannah that he’s okay after everything that went down on Tuesday.

Unfortunately, the only thing Alannah remembers from Tuesday is Eddie. Also unfortunately, Peggy being there turns the whole affair into a matriarchy and they overrule his bid for Candyland and assert their choice of Pretty Pretty Princess as the board game of the night. That’s how Richie ends up spending his Friday night in purple clip-on earrings, answering questions about his friends to an audience of his sister and an 8 year old girl.

Apparently Peggy had (re-)met Mike the other night, as well. “What I don’t get,” Peggy says, while flicking the spinner to take her turn, “is how someone like _you _has such polite friends. Do they just keep pairing you up with the best behaved boy in class, hoping their good behavior rubs off on you? It didn’t work with Stanley in head-start, I don’t know why they thought just throwing nice boy after nice boy at you would ever make a difference.”

“That sounds like the plot of a sterilized version of ‘It’s Raining Men’. Like, ‘It’s Sprinkling Nice Boys’. Instead of getting absolutely soaking wet you stay as dry as a freshly tumbled towel, because you’re a good girl who always uses an umbrella, and the nice boys just plunk off the nylon like junebugs off a screen door.” Richie manages to say this all while simultaneously taking his turn, and punctuates it by gently slipping a strand of shiny purple beads around his neck.

Peggy is too gobsmacked by his lunacy to respond, but Alannah chimes in, “Eddie’s not really a nice boy. He was kind of mean to you.”

“Oh yeah? Tell that to your Skee-Ball pony,” Richie says, defensively.

“I didn’t say I didn’t like him, I just said he’s not very nice,” Alannah concludes, curtly.

“See,” Richie directs to his sister, “she gets it.”

Peggy couldn’t see and didn’t get it, but she had more important things to worry about – like her blue game piece landing on the black ring.

**The Second Saturday**

Once autumn hits then there is nothing more beautiful than a weekend, those two days of freedom before the drudgery of school starts all over again. In the summer, the weekend is much less exciting. Parents at home, experiencing their own two days of freedom, infringing upon everything you’d hoped to do.

Richie essentially gets kicked out of his house. His dad takes over the garage to do whatever he putters around with, his mom takes over the living room to host a sales party (makeup? candles? picture frames?) for a client who’s too embarrassed to host at their own place. Peggy gets roped into helping her mom out, and Richie gets asked to be scarce. “In fact, why don’t you take this and go see a movie with one of your friends,” Maggie says, foisting a $10 bill on him.

“My friends are all busy,” Richie grouses.

“Let me guess. Sharon and Zack are dragging Bill out of town again, Rabbi Uris wants Stan to keep the Sabbath, Mr. Hanlon has farm work for Michael, and Sonia…” she trails off.

“Is still a nasty bitch,” Richie finishes for her, and normally his mother at least pretends to censure him, but instead she just nods and says, “precisely.” Richie’s not sure if it’s more a testament to how much his mother is trying to get him out of the house or just to how awful Eddie’s mom is.

“You pay more attention than I thought,” Richie admits. “Forgot Ben, though.”

“Oh, the portly one! There you go.” She pauses, takes another five out of her purse and hands it to him, “for snacks.”

Richie jams the cash in his pocket and allows himself to be ushered out the front door. He turns up on Ben’s doorstop shortly afterward, feeling slightly guilty.

“Oh, hey Richie,” Ben answers the door, speaking with even more mildness and gentility than usual. “Sorry if you called and I didn’t answer. My mom unplugs it sometimes when she needs to sleep,” he continues, explaining both his quiet tone and the desperate ‘don’t act like yourself’ pleading in his eyes.

“Ohh, fuck that’s right, your mom is a vampire,” Richie responds, almost quietly. “I got exiled from home today. You wanna see if there’s anything decent at the theater?”

Ben smiles. “Yeah, uh, let me go change and leave a note for my mom.” He closes the door and Richie has to find some way to occupy 10 idle minutes without making any noise. It’s excruciating. He longs desperately for anything to entertain him, even a yo-yo would do (though he’d never got as good at it as Bev), cheesy as that is. Ben saves Richie from succumbing to the urge to poke at his healing gums by emerging just in the nick of time.

There’s a dearth of new films that interest either of them, so they just go and see ‘Gremlins 2: The New Batch’ for the second time. Richie skips concessions (he can barely look at the popcorn without imagining hulls stuck inside the half healed holes in his mouth) and Ben skips because Richie skips, so they’ve both got the money and appetite for ice cream in the park after the movie.

Richie, facing firmly away from his old nemesis Paul Bunyon, rates all the new varietals of gremlins from best to worst and gives an impassioned speech about how no matter what anyone tries to tell him the female gremlin _is_ indeed mega-hot and anybody who disagrees is fooling themselves - but not him.

“I feel like if I try to question any of that you’ll just double down and go twice as hard, so I think I’ll just nod and agree,” Ben says, feeling loose enough to say what he’d normally just think.

“You’re learning, Haystack,” Richie replies, triumphantly. “Besides, I already knew you were on the same page as me, she-gremlin wise. You’ve always been the only one on my level when it comes to appreciation of the female form.” The sad thing is - it’s kind of true. Underlying Richie’s obdurate lewdness and Ben’s quiet romanticism was a shared precocious puberty, with the rest of the Losers only catching up to them now.

“Have you ever actually _liked_ a girl, though? A real one?” Ben says, freshly confident from Richie’s positive reaction to Ben’s earlier honesty. He wouldn’t have said it if he’d realized it was going to beat the air out of Richie like a punch to the gut.

Richie is scrambling in his mind for the proper response, but it all sounds stupid and defensive. Very, ‘I like girls! I like all the girls, so many of the girls. Women, really. Moms especially. Your mom! Hot night-prowling vampire mom. Rawr!’ He doesn’t say any of it.

Ben realizes his mistake when Richie doesn’t respond, but now he’s struck silent trying to figure out how to apologize or qualify his statement. It all sounds stupid and offensive. Very, ‘I know you like girls like that. I know you’re not…someone who doesn’t like girls. I know you’re not, you know, _gay_.’ He doesn’t say any of it, and it’s not quite what he believes anyway. He doesn’t think Richie is gay just because he’s never had actual feelings for a girl, and he also wouldn’t care if Richie were, and also there’s a missing piece or two he can’t contextualize because he doesn’t know enough to know.

Ben does know he absolutely has to say something when he notices Richie staring behind them at the Paul Bunyon statue, like the answer somehow lies there. “I didn’t mean it like that,” Ben says, simply.

Thankfully, Richie stops staring at Paul, but unfortunately he won’t look at Ben for his response, “Like you like Beverly, no. I’ve never liked a girl like _that_.”

It’s not a conclusion that Ben ever would have jumped to if Richie hadn’t gone all squirrely, but that combined with Ben’s intuitive nature (and the overall low-level Losers Club ESP) puts the question in his brain, “But you _do_ like _somebody_ like that?”

Richie, staring intently at the grass below, just shrugs - which is as good as a yes.

“That’s good,” Ben says. He thinks he knows how to save this, to talk about it without painful specifics. “Bill was the only person I could talk to about the heartache of being in love, and that’s too awkward for obvious reasons.” Ben smiles, starts walking towards his house and hopes Richie will follow. “Glad that there’s another romantic in the group,” he calls breezily over his shoulder, happy to see Richie is keeping step.

“Gross. If this is all just a bid to get me to go watch ‘Ghost’ with you, you can forget it. I’m not actually a girl, just because...” Richie gestures vaguely, only barely visible in Ben’s periphery.

“I like a lot of things that people say only girls are supposed to like. Anybody who is against that, it’s just because they don’t respect girls and women,” Ben earnestly declares.

“Alright, buddy, don’t go burning your bra over it,” Richie broadly responds.

Ben almost walks into a pole when he stops to glare at him, Richie stopping him just in time with a, “watch it, I’m supposed to be the blind one,” and, “shit, I didn’t mean to suggest that you have or need a bra.” Richie _has_ suggested this in the past, but this time he was only making fun of feminism (and not Ben’s weight) so he thinks he deserves a little credit there.

“You’re right, you’re never going to be able to romance anybody if you don’t start being a little nicer,” Ben censures, but without the necessary level of vehemence to shame Richie.

“I don’t know, just going off half the movies I’ve seen? There’s a lot of ‘I hate you, you worthless cad!’ and ‘Right back atcha you joyless harpy!’ and then BOOM, they’re pawing at each other and sucking face. Being an asshole might work to my benefit, some people are definitely into that,” Richie reasons.

“Only if they have no self-esteem,” Ben surmises.

“Yeah? I should be just fine then. I don’t think self-esteem is compatible with mommy issues.” The words taste bitter in Richie’s mouth. He’s looking forward to getting back to Ben’s house so he can have some water and break whatever spell that’s got him speaking so candidly. Stupid Ben and his deep well of understanding.

“You might be surprised,” Ben replies, cryptically.

“I think I’d know. You can only tell someone they’re cute so many millions of times before you have to accept that they really don’t get how fucking cute they are.” Richie is worrying his lip and looking hopefully forward to where he can see Ben’s place a few houses away.

“See, I told you that you were a romantic,” Ben says, letting them inside.

“Lies. I’m immune to the stuff. Patrick Swayze himself could show up here and give me one-on-one lessons in how to put the moves on someone and I’d just have to tell him, ‘yo, Swayze, a fuck-machine like me’s got no time for sweet nothings’ and he can float his ghost ass back to whatever haunted mansion he pirouetted out of. I mean, I assume that’s the basic plot of ‘Ghost’, anyway. So, yeah. Not a romantic,” Richie says.

“I should say not,” replies Arlene Hanscom, dryly. She’s entering the living room from the hallway, obviously coming freshly from a shower. Hair twisted up in a towel, thankfully modest bathrobe, a sheen of moisturizer that hasn’t been absorbed quite yet by her flushed red skin.

Both Richie and Ben rush to say ‘I’m sorry’ and speak over her, Richie’s words breaking through, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Hanscom. I thought you were still asleep.”

“I need to be up in time to get dinner on for Ben. Will you be joining us tonight, Richard?” Nice of her to ask, after she had to bear witness to this obnoxious 14 year old boy calling himself a fuck-machine.

“If that’s okay? My mom wants me scarce til 9-ish because she’s hosting and hocking a party for Tupperware or something.” Richie is sheepish, both for being awful and for begging. Usually he likes to split at dinner time. Family dinners with other people’s family are even more excruciating than with his own.

“Alright, you two can run along to Ben’s room while I get everything ready.”

The boys do as instructed. Richie apologizes again, this time to Ben, before taking a seat on his friend’s bed. Then he looks up and sees the New Kids on the Block poster still affixed to the inside of Ben’s door, and he remembers the scheme. “Hey, so, I have a favor to ask.”

Ben raises his brow to indicate that Richie should continue.

“I’m trying to get everyone to make a mixtape for Eddie so that when I give Eddie a mixtape from me he doesn’t read anything into it.” Richie is downright dolorous. The explanation gets more and more honest each time he gives it. At this rate he’s gonna ask Bill to contribute to the project by telling him, ‘I think I want to kiss Eddie. Can you help me in my bid to simultaneously express and obfuscate this heinous urge.’

Ben smiles. “I think I can help with that.”

“Thank you.”

“You romantic, you.”

“Actually, kindly fuck off.”

“It’s my room, Richie.”

**The Second Sunday**

Richie listens to music all day Sunday, bouncing back and forth between Mike’s records and the tapes and CDs he’d borrowed from Tre. He’s slowly starting to put together his mix, making sure that for every song that reminds him of Eddie he puts three that don’t. Kind of like an inverted compliment sandwich, but there’s three slices of bread. So like a Big Mac that’s missing one of its patties. Or maybe more like a salad, full of disappointment (lettuce, cucumber, red onion – gross), but buoyed by a couple of lovely cherry tomatoes (yum). 

Mike’s tape is so effortlessly nice it hurts to listen to. So uncomplicated by any deeper meaning, beyond maybe some pleasant affirmations like ‘you’ve got this’ and ‘I believe in you’. Richie makes a copy for himself.

His dad wanders in and out throughout the day, several times trying to make Richie laugh by pantomiming some sick bass slaps, sometimes looking quizzically at the covers of music he doesn’t recognize.

Finally he asks Richie, simply, “So what’s all this about then? You’re not just doing this for your orphan friend.”

“Never too soon to start job training, Dad. Remember, I’m destined to be the most famous deejay of my generation,” Richie replies, while carefully but still poorly writing out a sticker label.

“You may be too young to remember this, but I distinctly remember something about video killing the radio star. Instead of cultivating a taste in music maybe you should be working on your screen presence, be the next Mark Goodman,” Wentworth suggests.

“Whoever the hell that is,” Richie says, with the same beleaguered tone of voice as every teenager telling a parent that they don’t get the reference.

“One of the original MTV veejays, Richie. You’re gonna need to know this stuff if you want to make it in the biz,” Wentworth breezily replies. “So you can go on air and introduce videos from bands like,” and he holds up a cassette with a grotesque cover, “Primus?” _Neither_ of them know what the fuck _that’s_ all about.

“Yeah? You think that’s something I should do?” Richie questions.

“Jesus Richie, of course not. I think you should go to college and get a _real _job. But if you’re going to have pipe dreams you might as well strive for something that’s actually fun. Which one of us was born in the 40s again?” Wentworth punctuates this by pocketing the mystery tape from the record store, saying, “I’m gonna listen to this in the car” and walking away before Richie could argue against it. ‘Oh fucking well’, Richie thinks, ‘deal with that later.’

The rest of the day passes with pleasant banality, a dinner of microwaved chicken kiev and Rice-A-Roni, and Richie retires to his room to fall asleep to a cacophony of uncomfortable thoughts. He wishes for the blurring effect of the pain meds he’d traded away, so good at helping him slip away from a conclusion right before his brain could focus on it. Luckily, there was also music in this cacophony, so he feeds up all those little earworms to weaponize them against those thoughts, turn them into hungry graboids with an insatiable appetite for ‘what am I gonna be when I grow up’ and ‘Bill is going to move, it’s only a matter of time before it’s all of us’ and, most pressingly, ‘sexuality crisis’. The problem with turning your earworms into obligate carnivores is that they can turn sinister on you, and once again the dirge-like calliope is back in his brain - a confused orchestra of brass and horns from the torch songs in Mike’s collection and the organ and theremin from his own tracks, mixing so hellishly and cleaving so closely to the number one and unacknowledged thought he must avoid (the clown) that he _chooses _to focus back to the things he’s ostensibly trying to ignore. Only the most pressing of those thoughts is strong enough to compete against the mental monsters he’s inadvertently created for himself, so he thinks about Eddie instead. Too exhausted for anything else, he lets those thoughts be nice and pleasant in a way he’s never allowed before. He imagines, ‘what if he thinks of me too?’ and lets himself pretend the answer might be ‘yes’.

**The Second Monday**

There’s still a residual instinct to look to Bill in a time of crisis, so that’s where Richie’s feet (on pedals, guiding wheels) take him on Monday. He doesn’t call first, because there’s no room for that in the autopilot homing beacon nature of this instinct, so he doesn’t know beforehand that Mike and Stan are already over there. Richie feels relieved, let off the hook. It’s safety in numbers, diluting that Big Bill magic and guaranteeing there would be no quiet intimacy to make him vulnerable enough to discuss feelings.

They’re playing card games, which is a remarkably sorry excuse for a pastime, but Richie is certain his presence will be enough to spice up the festivities. (It’s not.)

Mike saves Richie from making the mixtape entreaty, by asking him how the vinyl transfer is going. “I’ve only got a couple hours free this afternoon, but I could come by tomorrow evening with some more blank tapes?” Mike asks, while shuffling cards to set up a new round. 

“Nah. Tomorrow I’m babysitting with my sister again. Or _for_ my sister, never quite sure. The Nells are in marriage counseling out of town on Tuesday nights and pay beaucoup cash to Peggy for babysitting their daughter,” Richie explains, taking a long glug of his cola. At least that’s _one_ thing he won’t miss when they move, the Denbroughs always buy Pepsi.

“Oh. You’re doing that again? I bet Eddie will want to check in on you again, he’s going to be at my place,” Ben says casually, like it’s not gonna ruin Richie’s concentration and vibe and life. 

“Ahh, I r-remember Eddie,” Bill says, fake wistful, like it’s some kind of funny joke and not something that is personally victimizing Richie.

“Have you started a tape for him yet, Bill? I’ve got a few good tracks so far, but I’m taping some of it off the radio so there’s a few seconds of commercials cutting things off,” Ben says, and Richie’s eyes are bugging out of his head now.

“Bill doesn’t need to make a tape,” Richie says at the same time as Bill says, “I d-d-don’t kn-know what you’re t-talking about.”

Ben ignores Richie and answers Bill, “Richie’s getting everybody to make some mixtapes for Eddie because he doesn’t have much music to listen to. It’s a whole big thing.”

“It is_ not_ a whole big thing,” Richie says quickly and adamantly, “it’s a _small _thing. Miniscule. Eddie Kaspbrak sized, for Eddie Kaspbrak.” He’s very much undermining his bid to remain cool.

“That’s nice. I can m-make one,” Bill says, with all the oblivious cool that Richie is lacking.

“You don’t have to,” Richie insists, not even sure why he’s doing so. “Eddie is your best friend, right? So he’d forgive you if you just, ya know, _didn’t_.”

Bill is confused. “I, I guess h-he. Used to be. Y-you all are now.” He smiles, and the cheesy performative nature of what he says next help to make it all come out clear, “I love you all equally.”

Richie is stewing, steaming red in both anger and embarrassment. It’s no surprise that he’s come away angry after another occasion of specifically seeking Bill’s camaraderie- it’s become a bit of a pattern for them. The honesty he thought he’d be avoiding that night busts out and he says, “I wish I did too.” He forces a laugh and hides his face in the fanned out cards of the very shitty hand he’d been dealt.

**The Second Tuesday**

Richie does end up babysitting on Tuesday, and Eddie does end up coming over. To ‘check in on’ him, as Ben had said the previous afternoon.

“Are you reasonably satisfied that I’m not on crack?” Richie asks, letting Eddie into the Nell residence while his charge watches TV in the living room.

“I’m not going to be able to tell right away like that, Richie. It’ll take me at least like two minutes to know for sure,” Eddie says, toeing off his shoes at the doorway.

“Hi, Eddie,” Alannah says, sneaking up on them.

“Hey Alannah,” he returns, with more ease than Richie expected. He’s marginally less jumpy tonight. “So is Richie alright, tonight? Does he need an adult?” Eddie asks her, like Richie isn’t even in the room.

“He’s alright,” she says, like it doesn’t matter to her either way. It doesn’t, really, she’s a fairly self-sufficient child. “Can we order the pizza now?” she implores impatiently, because that is one thing she can’t do for herself.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m getting to it. Why don’t you have a seat, Eds, gimme a second, I’ve got hungry mouths to feed.” He walks off to the kitchen with the cordless phone to make the order, while Eddie and Alannah have an impromptu staring competition out of sheer inability to think of anything to say.

Richie emerges a minute later, pizza freshly ordered, to a still silent (except for the television) scene. It’s awkward. Desperate to end this impasse he suggests the absolute stupidest possible solution. “Soooo…who’s up for some Pretty Pretty Princess?”

Oh no, why did he do that? See, once it’s out there, there’s going to be no backing Alannah down from the promise. She is_ obsessed_ with the game now. After last week she is doubly obsessed with Richie playing the game with her, like she’s never seen a boy in plastic jewelry before. 

Richie is not surprised when Alannah squeals out an emphatic “YES!”, but he is surprised when Eddie responds with an unbothered “sure.” Richie looks at him in shock and says, “I really did not expect you to agree to that.”

“Grow up, Richie. She’s a 6 year old girl, it’s not going to hurt your fragile masculinity to play some dumb game,” Eddie snips out, turning it around on Richie like he thought he’d only suggested it as a joke. Which, _what_? Richie is now extra confused.

“I’m 8, and it’s not a dumb game,” Alannah says, all while excitedly pulling it down from a low shelf on a book case that seems mostly devoted to family board games.

Richie is purple again, because Alannah has designated it his color. Alannah chooses blue, because she’d lost last Friday with pink and thinks it may be bad luck. Between the two colors remaining, pink and yellow, Eddie is certain to pick yellow. He may be suddenly secure enough to play a game like this, but Richie’s definitely sure that he’s not secure enough to play this game while rolling pink. Right?

Eddie chooses yellow, and Richie is pleased - both to be right, and because he’s partial to Eddie in yellow. Which, speaking of yellow, Eddie removes his Walkman and foldaway headphones from the kangaroo pouch of the hoodie he’s wearing and sets it on the coffee table next to them. “It was digging into my stomach,” Eddie explains, and Richie eyes it meaningfully as if to say, ‘we’ll talk about that later.’

Before long, Richie is caught up in admiring the appearance of the black ring on his spindly finger. “I can’t see how this ring could possibly be the loser ring.” Richie holds it out for both of them to inspect its majesty.

“Yeah, Richie. It’s super metal, you look so cool,” Eddie says sarcastically, batting Richie’s hand away from his personal sphere.

“What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully?” he says in his best Marlon Brando. “You want my friendship but you don’t even call me Godfather.”

“That’s the worst Godfather I’ve ever heard, Richie,” Eddie says, while unclipping the earring that hadn’t already fallen off. “The only reason I knew what you were going for was that you literally said ‘Godfather’ in it. Got any more impressions that say the subject right there in it? Maybe next a Batman impression that’s just you saying ‘I’m Batman.’”

They play through twice, Alannah winning once and Eddie winning another. The boys bicker the whole time through. By the time pizza arrives, Richie is already on cloud nine.

They decide to eat off paper plates in the backyard, because it’s nice out and they can. It shifts from sky blue pink to sunset orange while they eat. Alannah is fascinated watching Eddie dab at his slices with a paper towel, sopping up the little puddles of grease collecting in the pepperoni. She tries it for herself and ends up with all her cheese and toppings sticking to the paper towel. Richie wordlessly switches with her, a fresh untouched slice for her mangled one, and he goes to town removing the toppings from the paper towel with grotesque tongue and teeth scraping motions.

“Oh, nasty, that’s exactly like the awful way you eat fruit roll ups,” Eddie gags.

“Yeah? It’s also how I eat your m…” he forgets himself and his bid to keep things PG-rated around the kid, and stops himself from finishing the _especially _distasteful joke about Sonia Kaspbrak.

Eddie doesn’t particularly love the idea of listening to Richie field the question of ‘what were you about to say’ if Alannah decides to ask it, so he quickly cuts in, “Yeah, looks like that’s probably how you think kissing works.” It’s not a great pivot, but he hadn’t had a lot of time to craft something better. Something G-rated, with zero acknowledgment of Richie’s mouth anywhere on anybody’s body.

“Wouln’t you like to know,” Richie scoffs. Panics and adds, “how kissing works. Since you’ve never been kissed and all.”

“Graham Michaud kissed me by the tether ball at recess, last year at school,” Alannah informs them, proud that she’s possibly got one up on Eddie Kaspbrak.

Or maybe not, because next Eddie testily says, “Shows what you know, Richie. I have too been kissed.”

“You don’t have to try and impress anyone, or show up a 6 year old,” Richie retorts.

“I’m 8,” Alannah reminds them.

“_Who_ kissed you?” Richie asks, incredulous. “Your aunts don’t count.”

“It’s none of your business, Richie,” Eddie huffs.

“So, what, is _that_ where you’re really spending all your time? With your _girlfriend from Canada_?” Richie says.

All the color drains from Eddie’s face and he stands abruptly. “I know what that means, Richie. I know what you’re calling me.”

Oh no. Oh fuck. Richie has really fucked up, he knows. “Eds…” he begins.

“Don’t call me that! Or anything ever again, for that matter. I thought that _you_ above everyone else would never call me – _that_. Bowers and them called _all of us_ those things, but _I’m_ the only who got my name carved above ‘FAG’ on the Kissing Bridge.”

Richie is panicking because now Eddie is on the verge of tears and Richie doesn’t know how to turn any of it around and now it’s too late because Eddie is running, running to beat the devil, all through the backyard and around the front and presumably down the block to Ben’s house. Or maybe worse. What if he’s just running _home_? What if he’s running home to tell his mother he _hates _Richie, Richie in particular, and that everything she’d ever said about him was right.

“Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuckkkkk. Shit fuck motherfucking son of a bitch,” Richie whisper shouts, tearing at his hair. He buries his face in his hands, glasses be damned, propping up against his knees where they’re still arched over the grass, still glued to the ground when he should be running too.

A moment passes in silence, and Richie is begging for Alannah to break it by telling him how much he owes to the swear jar now. She’s good with math, she’ll have calculated it for sure. Instead she says, “Wait, does that mean that Eddie_ isn’t_ your boyfriend?"

**Next Week**

The whole next week Richie languishes in a fog of misery, a misery of his own making. Richie is so accustomed to the back and forth with Eddie, the patter, that he hadn’t anticipated how close he’d been to disaster once the rhythm had started. If there was any silver lining he could hold onto it’s that Eddie left the Walkman. And the Walkman might not mean anything to him anymore, tainted as it is by its association with Richie, but the tape from Bev_ must_ mean something. It has to. She’s a part of the whole of them, the group, and they miss her.

The mix, by the way, is so good. So cool. So much cooler than he could ever be. He listens to it back to back twice before he tapes a copy for himself, so he doesn’t wear out Eddie’s copy any more than it already has been. Then he listens to his copy of the copy every day, several times a day.

There’s so many hours in a day, though, and languishing can’t be _all_ he does. One day he goes with his dad to watch him and the other professional men of Derry play dad covers in their garage band. Wentworth says it’s because he’s been showing such an interest in music lately, that he thought Richie could appreciate it, but Richie thinks it’s more like a punishment for monopolizing the garage so much. Richie notices that the car is still playing that tape his dad purloined from the record shop haul and it is_ deeply_ weird, and the fact that both his dad and he actually like it is even weirder. He figures he’ll eat the loss and pay Tre back for it.

He and Peggy watch TV together. He and his mother share a few meals. The Losers show up too.

Mike comes over one evening and they finish up on his records, and he gamely doesn’t mention it when Richie gets a little emotional after it’s all over. Richie’s vulnerability may be unrelated to Mike’s dead parents, but the fact that he’s vulnerable at all opens him up to those feelings. Before Mike leaves, bike loaded with both records and cassettes, he and Richie hug.

Stan invites him to the JCC with him one evening to teach him chess (_again _– he’s tried before) and get his opinion on Ada Rosen. He’s too distracted to put his heart into either subject, but he’s happy to see Stan happy. He also invites Richie for dinner on his birthday, which is a low key affair with only family and Richie. Stan’s parents seem nervous the whole night, like the scene he’d created at his Bar Mitzvah was at risk of being repeated and becoming an annual tradition. That _doesn’t_ happen, unfortunately. 

Ben somehow convinces both Bill and Richie to go see ‘Ghost’ with him. They all love it.

Most surprisingly, he gets a call from Beverly. He almost misses it, from Peggy hoarding the phone again, but apparently Beverly is quite insistent (and apparently belligerent) until she goes to bring Richie the damn phone.

“Crikey, Ms. Marsh, what did you say to her? When she handed me the phone she looked at the thing like it was possessed,” Richie says, impressed. He’s excited for the first time all week. As excited as he has been all summer, bar any Eddie appearances.

“We’ll keep that between us girls, why don’t we?” Beverly responds, that same fox sly voice as before.

“That just makes me want to know more, and you know it,” Richie complains.

“Fine, have it your way. I told her that I’m bleeding like a stuck pig and cramping like a motherfucker, that long distance calling cards are expensive, and if she didn’t move her ass and get me Richie Tozier right fucking now, I was gonna take the next bus to Derry and beat her ass.” Beverly manages to sound both gravelly and chipper about it.

“First off, fucking gross. Never tell me that shit again. Second of all, I wish you would. Peggy definitely needs her ass beat, and we need our best dude Bev back in this piece. The dynamic is all wrong now.” Richie tries to sound conversational but he can’t help but sound like a guy who’s spent all week bingeing a rainy weather gothy soundscape put together by a friend that he misses, made for_ another_ friend that he misses.

“You don’t have to fake shit with me, Richie. Ben told me that you did something to piss off Eddie more than he’s ever been pissed off at you, and I know you’ve been moping about it all week because why else would you have let Ben force you to go see ‘Ghost’?” Beverly Marsh, right as always.

Richie walks over to his door to shut it the crack that his sister had left it open. Then he walks to the far corner of his room, the one that faces the outside and doesn’t share any walls with the rest of the house.

Quiet. “He thinks I called him _gay_.”

Challenging. “Did you?”

Pause. “Kind of.”

“You’re such a fucking idiot, Richie. You can’t just tell Eddie he’s gay, you have to wait until _he_’s ready to tell _you_.” Another pause, and what may be literal crickets – he is right next to a cracked open window, after all. “Richie, I can’t afford to use my last 10 minutes to listen to you not know what the hell to say.”

“So you think Eddie is gay?” Richie asks, meekly.

“What, you _don’t_? If you were saying it like some sort of a joke against him I’m going to hang up on you,” she warns. Richie hears the unsaid, “and never talk to you again,” and he knows that would probably be true (never again, or at least not for _a long time_).

So he takes a deep breath and puts all his cards on the table. “A little bit, but I didn’t _mean to_, and in my defense I am also somewhat homo and definitely gay for Eddie,” he says in a whiplash whisper so sotto voce that he’s not sure she even heard him.

“Ahhh,” Beverly says. Then she cuts out completely and Richie is afraid that she hung up on him and he’s panicking until he hears a robot voice tell him “there are two minutes remaining for your call” and then she’s back on the line and saying, “Sorry, I’m almost out. I used half of it for Ben earlier. I would have used it all for Ben because it’s his turn this month, but after talking with him I knew you needed some sense talked into you. So, here’s your sense talking,” dramatic pause that makes him think _again_ that the line disconnected, but then she concludes, “you’ve got to talk to him.”

“HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO DO THAT?” he shouts in the phone, and if Beverly were there it would be_ him_ that she violently channels her menstrual rage against.

“I don’t know. For some reason I trust that you’ll figure it out. Okay, I gotta go, love you, byeeee.” And then the line disconnects for real.

Richie was really hoping that call would improve his mood. It really doesn’t.

**The Third Tuesday**

It’s Tuesday again. Richie has no intention to go over to the Nell residence with his sister and be subjected to the knowing and judgmental gaze of a pre-pubescent child, so he tells her to leave him out of it and do her damn job for once. And she_ almost_ does, but something indefinable inspires her to draw Richie out. It’s not even from a desire to stick him with the heavy lifting tonight, she doesn’t have any pressing plans, but she almost feels like her little brother shouldn’t be left alone with this mood. Brooding and sulking are a teenage rite of passage, but Richie’s style for it has always leant on irony and histrionics. Instead, he’s been withdrawn and laconic, and it’s freaking her out.

So she promises him 80% of the cash, and he agrees because he’s a jobless teenager with no other prospects for pocket money. 

On the way out he grabs the Walkman at the last second, just in case. When they’re walking the short distance over to the Nell’s place his sister notices he has it and says, “That mean you going to finally give me _my_ Walkman back?”

He just looks down at the device in his hand like it’s some tragically dead animal he’s just failed to revive, and listlessly tells her, “Yeah, sure.”

For a night with such a sluggish start it doesn’t really take long for everything to come to a head. The Nells have barely left before there’s a knock at the door and an Eddie Kaspbrak on the other side of it. Peggy is the one to answer, and she announces him by saying, “Richie, your little friend is here.”

Richie almost falls over himself rushing to the foyer, and – sure as shit, she wasn’t lying, there he is. He looks angry, but he always looks a little angry. But more than that he looks nervous.

“Walkman?” Richie asks stupidly, instead of saying hello.

“What?” Eddie says, and he still hasn’t come in. He’s on the porch and his hands are buried tensely in the same hoodie from last week.

“You forgot your Walkman,” Richie says, and holds it up to him as visual proof.

“Oh. No. I forgot about… no, I came to return this.” Eddie holds out the contents of his pockets. It’s a plastic yellow beaded necklace. He must have still been wearing it from the game when he’d run off last week.

As soon as Richie sees the thing he starts to tear up a little bit, much to the embarrassment of everyone present. In reality it’s 20 cents worth of plastic and string, but the melodrama playing in Richie’s head recasts it as MacGuffin, a symbol of Eddie’s goodness and a magical relic of reconciliation. It’s got to _mean something_. A generic sweeping movie score invades Richie’s brain while he mentally prepares to prostrate himself like a worm before the golden grace of Eddie and the plastic necklace. Outside of Richie’s inner narrative is the more prosaic tale of Eddie avoiding Richie’s gaze and handing the necklace to Peggy when he can’t think of a reason to stall further.

With his task accomplished Eddie turns to leave, but Richie almost losing his chance to inaction causes him to overreact and grab at Eddie’s arm in a too-tight vice grip. It wouldn’t be out of place coming from the man of action in an adventure romance, but here it’s a misstep. 

“Let go,” Eddie demands. Richie doesn’t, he holds on tighter, a mix of earnest desperation and chauvinist socialization overriding what little good sense he has.

“Richie, _let go_ of my arm,” Eddie says, the calm in his voice chilling Richie with a dose of shame that washes over him like ice water. Eddie winces as Richie’s grip loosens, and seeing _that_ has got Richie staring over him to scope out the suburban street ahead, begging for a truck to come by that he can jump in front of.

“That’s the arm I broke. It’s not quite right anymore,” Eddie explains.

Richie has let go of his arm but his fingers are still bunched up around the sleeve. “Eddie, we’ve gotta talk,” he says plainly. He was supposed to say sorry first, but his sister is still kind of watching them from a step back in the foyer. Eddie isn’t looking particularly amenable to the request until Richie adds, “_Bev_ told me I have to talk to you.” Not joke or prod or project onto, not demean or aggrandize, just _talk_. 

Eddie looks like he’s still very tempted to bolt, but after several facial tics of angry consideration he finishes off with a curt nod and allows Richie to drag him to the Nells’ backyard, to the hedgerow on the edge of their property.

“I’m so so _so_ sorry,” Richie finally says. He decides not to waste any time and goes for broke, “It’s not _you_ who’s the homo, that’s all on me. I’m the one.”

For some reason Eddie thinks that’s _very _funny. He laughs and shakes his head, he says, “It doesn’t work that way, Richie. It’s not interchangeable with just any other insult. Like if you said ‘it’s not _you_ who’s the asshole, it’s_ me_ who’s the asshole.’ Not that you’d ever _need_ to say that because it’s _always_ you who’s the asshole,” Eddie reasons.

“No, see, because...I’m _obsessed_ with you, is the thing. Think about it. In these past few years when have I ever _not_ been hyper-fixated on you?” Richie pleads, like he’s testifying against himself to prove his own guilt.

“No, Richie. I know what that really is. You act like you don’t care what people think about you, but I’ve never met anyone who wants to be liked as bad as you do. You have so many friends and even family who love you, but _that’s_ not even enough, right? So you need to find someone who likes you _the best_. Someone who loves you more than your sister, someone who loves you more than they love Bill. That’s what I am to you, some potential ego boost. I’ve always just been an easy target for you, and all you’re doing now is getting confused about what to aim at me,” Eddie counters.

Some of that is so true that acknowledging it would devastate Richie, but enough of it is wrong that Richie can valiantly ignore the rest. “If I want you to like me best it’s only because I like _you_ best.”

That takes the wind out of the sails of Eddie’s logical argument, because he can’t continue without feeling like a hypocrite – he can’t really criticize Richie for wanting to hear those words from someone (him) when hearing them himself felt so unexpectedly immense and gratifying.

While Eddie is still stricken with it, Richie takes it on himself to undercut the simplicity of his last sentiment with some embarrassing babbling. He says, “You know how you can tell it’s true? I wanted to make you a mixtape so I made everyone else make you one too so you wouldn’t _get_ how obsessed I am. The tape I made is awful because I put stuff you’d hate on it. There’s barely a love song in the bunch because I’m a coward.”

This is enough to render Eddie unstricken, and even grant him the coolness upper hand. “But the important question is, did you put any GNR on it?” he jokes.

Now Richie is the one stricken by that immense rush of affection, and he can barely choke out, “That’s hilarious, Eds, but how can you joke at a time like this?” Whether he’s laughing or crying he is surely in the throes of hysteria, and he drops to the ground like a marionette with its strings cut. Eddie hesitantly follows, dropping more like a rag doll.

“Ben told me about the mix tapes, so I already kind of had it at the ready,” Eddie admits. “He already gave me his, he figured whatever grand gesture you had planned to bestow them upon me was already ruined after I told him I hated you and never wanted to talk to you again.”

“How is it? I hope it’s not all New Kids,” Richie asks, amazed that they’re already swept up in a dialogue even after all the _things_ they’ve said. He’s completely oblivious to the fact that there’s even deeper things on the horizon. 

“Ben thinks you would hate it, but I think it’s nice. I know a lot of the songs already, unlike Bev’s tape. It’s _fun_, ya know. I’ve only listened to it once, though. Over at his place, because apparently I left my Walkman somewhere…” Eddie trails off and Richie shoves the Walkman into his hands. Both of them try to ignore their hands brushing together while the exchange is made.

Eddie stuffs the Walkman and folded up headphones into his kangaroo pouch and he buries his hands in his sleeves with a shiver. Richie is reminded of just a few moments ago, with the arm grabbing. “I’m sorry I grabbed you. What do you mean your arm’s _not right_? I thought it was a pretty clean break.”

Eddie pauses for a long time, nervously grabs up clumps of grass and releases the blades. “After the sewer, after we went home, my cast was filthy. Whatever got on it, whatever happened down there, some of it seemed to disappear? But most of it _didn’t_, because you can’t take a cast into a sewer and come out clean. I knew it wasn’t supposed to get wet, but I_ had_ to wash it. I scrubbed it off, I scrubbed my whole body til it was as red as that dumb V. Then I blow dried the cast, because I couldn’t let my mom see it had gotten wet, and it was too much direct heat trapped between the cast and my skin and I guess I blistered. All week after that I tried to ignore it, but it felt like bugs crawling around inside the thing so I jammed a knitting needle down there to scratch at it. Of course that just made it worse, broke the skin. I know I should have told her the truth, but I was afraid of how she’d react and I just _couldn’t_.”

Eddie has to pause, because it’s a lot of talking, even for someone as motor mouthed as him. Richie has so many questions already but he doesn’t interrupt.

“I got sick,” Eddie continues. “One day I passed out and I woke up in the hospital. I’d gotten an infection.” Eddie pauses again, trying to summon the fortitude to admit the next part. “It was a god damned _staph infection_.” Of course, he _is_ tempted to say staphylococcus, but after coming this far, why play coy?

Richie’s eyes bug out tremendously, “That’s why you couldn’t tell me. Shit, yeah, I get it, I would have never let up on the staff jokes. Or the dramatic irony. It’s too rich. No, you were totally right to leave me in the dark and I’m so sorry.”

Eddie seems pleased with Richie’s more measured reaction, so he continues, “Yeah, _I know_ I was right, fuckface. Tell me something I don’t know. So, yeah, now my arm is fucked up and that’s why I only wear long sleeves. It’s not just the scarred over gash, I seriously think my arm got stunted or something and now my arms are asymmetrical.”

“Ohhhh. That does explain the wardrobe change. I was hoping you’d just gotten chubby,” Richie admits.

“That’s a weird thing to _hope_, but okay,” Eddie sighs out, decides to ignore _that_. He leans back on his palms and stretches out his legs. They both let a little bit of protracted silence pass for the first time in the conversation.

“Why was it _such_ a long time, though? Why the complete disappearing act? Are staph infections usually that bad?” Richie asks, mentally giving himself one million high-fives for saying ‘staph infection’ with an even tone.

“They can be. It probably _wouldn’t _have been if I weren’t me and didn’t have the mother I have. You know that no illness is simple with her. If she spun so much misery out of _bullshit_, imagine how bad she is when something _real_ happens. It was like a self-fulfilling prophecy of all her worst fears. Or desires, I don’t know. Of course you know she wasn’t happy with the care I was getting at Derry Home Hospital, so she insisted on hospitalizing me in Portland. For _three weeks_. In all the hubbub of treating the infection my arm needed to be rebroken and reset, too. It was all so fucked.” Eddie is upset to be reliving it, it’s more than he’s told anybody – _except for Bev_, which is the rest and worst of the story.

“One day I woke up in the hospital and I couldn’t remember any of you,” Eddie says, not warning for it or contextualizing it. “I mean it, _for real_. It wasn’t because of pain or medication. It was _the distance_, I knew it. Not until my mom said something about all the peace and quiet, now that I’m away from all the hooligans I call friends. I just turned to her and I said, ‘I don’t have any friends, mom.’ Because in that moment that’s what I believed. And the smile on her face, it was the most _evil_ thing I’ve ever seen. I was so struck with how wrong it was for a mother to be happy that her son is lonely, in a hospital, with no friends. But that wrongness, that’s what _made me_ remember. I remembered all of you, but it was like I couldn’t keep you in focus. I would recite your names in my head, over and over again – Bill, Ben, Mike, Stan, and Richie – and even then I knew I was missing somebody, because I knew we were lucky seven. I knew that was _important_. So I shut my eyes tight to block out the horrible hospital light and my mom’s horrible grinning face and I finally remembered her. It was Bev I was forgetting, and suddenly I knew I _had_ to talk to her. I knew she was in Portland too, and I had to talk to her. Over the next couple days she was all I would let myself think about. Every time I would start to forget her this stupid phrase would get stuck in my head. ‘January embers, January embers, January embers’. Even now I don’t know what the hell that _means_, but it would make me remember her.”

Richie is horrified, all cold sweats, doused in a complete remembrance of Last Summer and a new overarching fear of the future.

Eddie continues, “Also, there was this nurse. He was young, and he was…_he_, and my mom didn’t approve of him because she doesn’t think nursing is a proper career for a man. You know, _woman’s work_. But he was nice to me, and in the rare moments they could get my mom to leave my bedside he would talk to me and joke with me. Once, I asked him why he was so nice to me when my mother was making his and everyone else’s life so miserable, and he told me that _that _was exactly why. That_ he’d_ had a mother like that, and he’d been a boy like me. The only thing scarier than when I started forgetting my friends is when he told me that I was _like him_. Because…I could tell what he was. He was, you know, a total flamer. And he thought I was _like him_, and the scariest part was that I didn’t even mind that he thought that because maybe it couldn’t be that bad if you can be like _that_ and be like _him_, because he was funny and good at his job and he was _kind_.”

Eddie stops to swallow, and lick his lips, and swallow again because his throat aches from the telling of it.

“He helped me. I’m not sure how he worked it out with the small bits of information I had, but he found Beverly’s number for me and he got rid of my mother so I could call her and he got rid of her again so Beverly could visit me. I didn’t believe she’d actually come, but she_ did_ and she was there for _hours_. We talked about _everything_. We told each other all this stuff we’d never told anyone. She told me she missed you all so much that if you’d all been there she would have kissed each and every one of you. I told her ‘so would I’, like it was a joke, but it wasn’t really. She had her Walkman with her, to listen to on the bus she took to the hospital, and she made me listen to that 10-minute-long song by The Cure. We both were crying when she had to leave, but the real pain was when she _arrived_, not when she left. Because when she first sat down by me she said, ‘Tell me your name again. Tell me all of theirs. Tell me a good memory we shared, but don’t tell me about the bad ones.’ I think it was a whole ten minutes before she _really _remembered who I was.” Eddie can’t tell the story in the order it happened, or think to edit out the parts he shouldn’t tell. All he can do is say things as they come to him and hope Richie understands. 

“But Beverly _does_ remember us. She calls us. She called me last night. She writes us. She remembers us,” Richie says, in a panic.

Eddie kind of laughs and coughs at the same time. “So, warning, this is gross, but… she told me she only remembers us when she’s _bleeding_.”

Richie blinks slowly, completely aghast and agog. “That is _so_ gross but it weirdly explains so much.”

“Right? So that’s some more awful knowledge I get to live with,” Eddie says, pulling his knees up to his chest and resting his chin on them. Another long pause before he says, “I’m so afraid of her now.”

“Beverly?” Richie is offended on her behalf. It’s not her fault that her vagina hemorrhages every month.

“No! My mother. Because none of her threats are idle anymore. I know if she wants to move us she _will_ do it. I know that if I leave I’ll forget. It’s like…have you ever been under anesthesia? Those 10 seconds when they count you down and you don’t know if you’ll ever wake up again. That’s how I feel about leaving Derry. If I can’t remember my friends when I leave is it going to be like I never woke up?” The ‘like I _died_?’ is left unspoken.

Richie can’t help it, he reaches out and wraps his arms awkwardly around the little pyramid shape Eddie’s turned himself into. Eddie lets him. The tension should be building, because of the gravity of everything they’re uncovering, but it starts to dissipate instead. Because it _has to_, like slowly letting air out of a balloon that was poised to pop.

“I think she had him fired,” Eddie says miserably, harkening back to his nurse friend. A sad subject, but not an eldritch one. “Or tried to. Maybe just reassigned, I hope.”

“On what fucking grounds?” Richie demands, outraged on the behalf of a guy he’s never met.

“She could tell he had that soft spot for me. That he was helping me, maybe even could tell that he was pulling whatever strings he could to limit her hovering. She thought he was _touching_ me, and she thought _I _was encouraging it.” Eddie looks especially haunted admitting this. He wants to tell Richie what she’d said about _the places_, the constant hovering threat of the places she said she could put him if he needed to _be fixed_.

He loses his chance to mention it when Richie responds like a dumbass. “He _didn’t_, though, right?” Richie immediately regrets asking, feeling like he just threw himself into cahoots with Sonia Kaspbrak. Also, “Oh god, you _did_ say that you’ve been kissed. Please tell me you didn’t get your first kiss in a hospital from some sexy male nurse and now you’re ruined for boys your own age?” It sounds like a flip and inappropriate joke, but for Richie it’s a real fear and that’s obvious enough to Eddie for him to be annoyed rather than livid.

“No, he didn’t,” Eddie snaps. “She’s a fucking liar. I wouldn’t have said he was _nice_ if he was a pedophile, Richie,” he censures, but does so with a soft mien because he sees the pitiful look on Richie’s face. Then Eddie actually smiles and drops a bombshell on him. “It was Bev. She gave me my first kiss.”

“You’re bullshitting me,” Richie gawps.

“I think it was that fucking Cure song. All that mopey ‘kiss me goodbye’ shit put it in her head. Not that I was against it or anything! It was nice for it to be someone like her, someone I trust,” Eddie says, a little wistfully.

Richie wants to hoot and pat him on the back and tell him congratulations and ask him a friendly and supportive, ‘How was it’? but he just _can’t._ What he can say is, “How?...”

“Lips on lips, Rich. She just _kissed me_, you know. On the mouth, but not romantic. Well, it _was kind of_ like a romantic kiss, but only on the surface?” Eddie starts his reply cooly at first, but ends more awkwardly.

“Only on the surface?” Richie repeats.

“Yeah, like to outside observers it would be, so on the surface it looks like, but deep down there’s not…” Eddie trails off, right in time for Richie to hurriedly blurt out, “Show me.”

“_Show_ you?” Eddie asks, incredulous.

“Show me how she kissed you. I just can’t picture this mentally _at all_, if I’m going to believe it I’ll need a demonstration,” Richie reasons, ridiculously.

Eddie doesn’t respond, but he does push Richie pretty violently down onto the grass, and Richie is sure that he’s really gone and done it - crossed his final line with Eddie.

But, instead, “Lie down. I was lying down in the hospital bed, so if you want it to be the same you have to lie down too.”

Richie wordlessly obeys, and swiftly lies back on the grass. He doesn’t know what to do with his arms so somehow they end up crossed over his chest, which…

“Geez, Richie, I was in a hospital bed, not a fucking coffin.” Eddie grabs his hands to correct them, but kind of just ends up holding onto them, which makes for difference number one. Then Eddie kisses him. It’s only _an approximation _of the kiss Beverly had given him last autumn, a few weeks before his birthday, in a hospital in Portland - but he doesn’t really remember it _that_ well. So his lips might slot at a different angle, and the pressure may be different, and it _definitely_ goes on longer – but he can’t be expected to have it recorded beat by beat in his long-term memory. He does his best.

Afterwards, Richie pushes himself up on his elbows at a 45 degree incline. “You probably weren’t flat on your back like that, though. Probably reclining, propped up with pillows?” Richie asks, like he’s making casual conversation. Then he starts to make wild facial contortions to reorient his glasses without actually having to use his hands. He doesn’t quite pull it off, so Eddie reaches out to straighten them for him – but once he’s got them in hand he removes them instead and says, “I also wasn’t wearing glasses.” He punctuates this by rubbing his thumb over the tiny indent in his brow where Richie’s frames had dug into his face.

“This may be too many variables…” Richie begins, before Eddie cuts him off with attempt number two. This one is no closer to a perfect recreation, but it’s all the better for it.

**The Third Friday**

They were going to wait til next Tuesday rolls around again, Richie with all his tapes and Eddie with more stories of their time apart – nicer ones, now that the dam was broken on those both big and terrible. They make it three days before Eddie breaks down and tries to (carefully) assert his will. It’s Friday, Nell date night, and Richie begs off of babysitting to meet up straight at Ben’s house. Richie tries to convince Eddie to come back to his for a while, but Eddie is convinced his mother has spies in some of the Tozier’s neighbors (he’s right) and insists on staying put.

Ben is their friend and they love him but right now he feels like their chaperone and it’s excruciating. Not as excruciating as Bill’s mixtape, which they all listen to together and roundly mock as _by far_ the worst. Eddie loves them all, though - regardless of taste level. He’s going to try harder to carve more time out for all his friends, but he knows he has to be more careful than ever, that his fear of what his mom might do - where she might put him - is not just paranoia.

It’s while they’re listening to Mike’s tape that Richie interrupts to say, with some great satisfaction, “hey you guys, I think I’m healed now.” At their skeptical faces he continues on to clarify, “Not, like, my trauma or anything. Those scars are forever. I just mean my wisdom teeth.”

Richie still feels wise without them, probably even more so, which might just be enough for a moment’s contentment. Feeling entirely too zen in this realization, he has to ask, “So, Ben, we need you to weigh in on this. Major bone of contention between Eddie and me. Tell me… is the Tootsie Pop owl actually wise, or is he just an owl?”

**The End**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is from Spegetti Western by Primus. 
> 
> Please let me know if there's something I need to tag and haven't. I hope it was better than just a glorifed Buzzfeed I Love The 80s Listicle. 
> 
> Also, _of_ course I made the mixtapes. A million years ago when it was for a short story (in which the repeated use of Tears for Fears was relevant. It's not anymore.). There's really only a select handful of songs on here that I don't actually like. Even Bill's mix is only supposed to be bad because it's not cohesive, not because the songs suck. [Here's a link on my tumblr](https://dystopiary.tumblr.com/post/187311623641/aggregate-post-for-the-fanmixes-i-made-to) to all the mixes.
> 
> Last but not least, please check out the beautiful art made by tumblr user [clod-official](https://clod-official.tumblr.com/) : [here](https://clod-official.tumblr.com/post/188284878259/) & [here](https://clod-official.tumblr.com/post/189301623619/). Enjoy those uncanny looks into the Reverb Sound universe, and all the rest of their art! We have a phenom & singular talent in our fandom, folks.


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